210 FIRST BOOK OF FORESTRY 



not quite follow the great river, but bends across to the 

 east, leaving part of Wisconsin and Illinois as half prairie, 

 and then crosses it again, including the greater part of 

 Missouri, all of Arkansas, the eastern part of the Indian 

 Territory, and Texas in the timbered portion. Following 

 this western timber limit, we note a belt marked with 

 green dots, extending from Texas to Minnesota, which 

 is a sort of half prairie country where patches of forest, 

 usually scrub-oak woods, alternate with prairies. To the 

 west of this we see the great prairies and plains ; then 

 a set of narrow red patches, representing the ragged, conif- 

 erous forests covering part of the numerous high ranges 

 of the Kockies; then the bare, arid regions of the Great 

 Basin ; and west of this, a broad belt of coniferous forests 

 skirting the Pacific from the northern boundary nearly to 

 the southern limit of California. 



Our eastern forest, we note, consists of three parts : a 

 northern and a southern belt of coniferous forests, and 

 a broad hardwood forest between these two. 



The northern belt of conifers is composed largely of 

 white pine, Norway pine, and hemlock in the western and 

 central parts, and of spruce in the eastern. The great 

 pineries of Wisconsin and Michigan and the spruce woods 

 of Maine belong to this belt. 



The southern belt of conifers is composed almost entirely 

 of pure stands of the southern pines, the longleaf , loblolly, 

 and shortleaf, with cypress covering the swamps. 



