BOTANY OF THE ROUTE. 23 



The other vegetation of these prairies is too varied for special enumeration here. Most of the 

 plants found in them are mentioned in my list of those collected west of the Cascade range. 

 Of the 360 species there given, more than 150 are peculiar to these prairies, being a very large 

 proportion considering their small extent in comparison with the forests. It is also observable 

 that these are of a group characteristic of the Great Plains and California, of which botanical 

 regions these prairies form the northwestern outskirts. 



From February to July they look like gardens, such is the brilliancy and variety of the flowers 

 with which they are adorned. The weary traveller, toiling through the forests, is sure to find 

 in them game, or, at least, some life to relieve the gloomy silence of the woods. 



The narrow strip of sandy prairie along the sea beach is particularly interesting to the 

 botanist, for there he finds many beautiful plants not seen elsewhere, which, wandering from 

 more southern climes, meet in the adjoining cranberry marshes the cold-loving northerners 

 before alluded to as common in the swamps. (See Abronia arenaria and umbellata, Orobus 

 littoralis, Cymoptenis? littoralis, Fragaria Chilensis, JFranscria, (two species,) Calystcgia, Solda- 

 ?iella, &c.) 



A few remarks are necessary upon the origin of the dry prairies so singularly scattered 

 through the forest region. Their most striking feature is the abruptness of the forests which 

 surround them, giving them the appearance of lands which have been cleared and cultivated 

 for hundreds of years. From various facts observed I conclude that they are the remains of 

 much more extensive prairies, which, within a comparatively recent period, occupied all the 

 lower and dryer parts of the valleys, and which the forests have been gradually spreading over 

 in their downward progress from the mountains. The Indians, in order to preserve their open 

 grounds for game, and for the production of their important root, the camas, soon found the 

 advantage of burning, and when they began this it was only those trees already large that could 

 withstand the fires. Occasionall}&quot; gigantic fir trees, isolated or in groups, show, by their immense 

 size, that these prairies have not been produced by, nor always exposed to, fires, for they must 

 have attained a considerable age before they could have resisted fire. 



The introduction of the horse, about the beginning of this century, was a further inducement 

 for burning, and doubtless also caused an increased settlement in the prairies by these people, 

 hitherto accustomed to travel mostly by water, and to depend upon fishing for their subsistence. 

 On some prairies near Vancouver and Nisqually, where this burning has been prevented for 

 twenty years past, young spruces are found to be growing up rapidly, and Indians have told me 

 that they can remember when some other prairies were much larger than at present. That 

 they never were covered with forest is shown by the perfect smoothness of their surface; while 

 in places very completely cleared of forests by fires is always found mounds and hollows, left 

 by stumps, and an immediate growth of shrubs and trees follows, showing a tendency to return 

 to forest, instead of to form prairies. Great changes must have occurred in the conformation 

 and climate of this part of the coast since forests began to cover a surface once probably as 

 bare as that of the Central Plains. 



Several kinds of animals are closely confined to these prairies or their borders. Among them 

 are the deer, rabbit, gopher, meadow-mice, and, in less degree, probably, the sewellel, (Aplo- 

 dontia.) mole, prairie-mouse, (HESPEROMYS AUSTERUS,) which seems, like the plants, to have 

 wandered from the east side of the Cascades to Steilacoom. Wolves and foxes are scarce 

 compared to their numbers on the plains, while their associates there, the badger, coyote, and 

 other species, have not been found west of the Cascades. 



