Vol,. XXIV. No. lo.] 
POPULAR SCIENCE NEWS. 
147 
isolated worker may here see others performing 
operations that he himself has attempted, and he 
cannot fall to gain much to lighten his future labor. 
These operations are, as was remarked hy the expert 
who was showing his method of mounting blood, 
often extremely simple, though as described in text- 
books they too often appear exceedingly complex. 
Their success depends on just one or two little 
things, and to learn these one or two little things 
there is no better opportunity than this working 
session. 
But there is another field of usefulness for the 
society, in awakening in the public an interest in 
the microscope and the wonders tliat it reveals. 
Accordingly, it is customary to give in the city 
visited an exhibition of objects readily seen and 
recognized by unpracticed observers. The Princess 
Rink at Detroit was, therefore, fitted with long 
plank tables, on which were arranged one hundred 
and fifty microscopes, each presided over by its 
owner, who, to the stream of men, women, and 
children passing for two hours before him, attempted 
to tell what he could of the object exhibited. Bou- 
quets and vases of flowers made of the scales 
of butterflies' wings, diatoms arranged in geometric 
and other forms, polycystina from Barbadoes, the 
circulation in the foot of a frog, the crystals on an 
onion skin, mould taken from decaying onions, 
photographic views, oysters in their free or swim- 
mimg stage, stained animal and vegetable tissues, 
were among the greatest attractions oflfered. Of 
those who applied their eyes to the microscopes 
there were three classes : The first, which saw- 
nothing; the second, which was satisfied with an 
" Oh, my ! " of admiration and delight ; and a third, 
which saw with mind as well as eye, and passed on 
rejoicing in the opening of a new world. To open 
this world to a few of the many who crowd around 
the instruments, is to the microscopist worth all the 
trouble and fatigue involved. 
As a mark of appreciation on the part of some 
of the citizens of Detroit, a steamboat was engaged 
to take the society up and down the river. Before 
returning, the laboratories of Messrs. Parke, Davis 
& Co. were visited by special invitation of the firm. 
All the processes of medicine-making were in- 
spected, and the visitors left deeply impressed with 
the number and variety of industries involved in 
preparing them. On the return journey a lunch 
was served by Messrs. Parke, Davis & Co., and then, 
after the offering of suitable resolutions of thanks, 
the society was adjourned till some day in the 
August of 1891. 
[Original in PopuUir Science New9.\ 
BOTANICAL NOTES FROM THE REGION 
OF NEW MEXICO. 
^ BY M. J. GORTON. 
jf' That great river often called the Nile of New- 
Mexico, the Rio Grande, rises in Colorado and 
flows directly through the center of the Territory 
of New Mexico, and, with its numerous tributaries, 
has a fall for nearly the entire length of the land 
of an average of ten to twenty feet per mile. This 
river is the outlet to the pent-up waters which, 
during recent geological ages, — when almost per- 
petual snow covered the mountains, and when the 
sun during the hot, scorching summer seasons 
melted the snows and demoralized the glaciers, — 
cau.sed the formation of vast inland lakes, which in 
time burst all boundaries and made a channel, the 
Rio Grande, to the gulf. At the edge of the 
t;!aciers, fringing the becks and swaying in the 
torrents, drenched with spray, and carpeting the bar- 
[ ren hillsides, hung masses of emerald mosses, with 
a profusion of sedges and grasses, growing to the 
water's edge. 
After this gradual lowering of the waters, and 
consequent elevation of the vast mountain ridges, 
we find the verdure representing Arctic, sub-Arctic, 
temperate, semi-tropical, and tropical plants, — for, 
as the waters cut and scooped out channels for 
themselves, the plants must needs accommodate 
themselves to the widely different altitudes. A 
marked peculiarity is the noticeable sparseness 
of the individuals, and the large number of the 
different species. An acre of ground in the rich 
alluvial soil of the river basins on the Atlantic 
slope or in the Mississippi Valley contains more 
than ten times as many plants as an acre of land in 
the valley of the Rio Grande. It must be remem- 
bered that the tones and colors of this vast grayish- 
green land, always bounded by a mocking, fugitive 
horizon, forever receding, is over 7,000 feet above 
the level of the sea ; that the vast arid wastes are all 
broken about the edges by the traversing canons — 
the sluice-w,iys for the drainage of the majestic flint 
vertebra of the old Rockies; — and that where arid- 
ness prevails, browns and blacks prevail. The 
universe here is exhibited in its nudity, and the 
grand proportions of the articulated skeleton show 
but slight vegetable clothing with which to drape 
and save from utter nakedness. 
. The vast plains absorb distance. Travelling over 
miles of apparently endless sameness, it is as if you 
had not moved; pursue the vanishing point before 
you, and there is no visible shortening in the 
perspective — the entire visible horizon keeps pace 
with your progress. This is the bed of the former 
great lake. In shrinking, the thousands of square 
miles left exposed, saturated with alkali, w-ere left 
unfitted for any of the usual plants, but in time 
alkaline plants, of grayish tint, and covered with 
minute scales of scurfy meal, filled in. These 
belong — nearly all of them — to the beet family 
(Chenopoiliacea) , the prominent member, atriplex; 
but there are grasses, also, which thrive upon deso- 
late wastes. There are many of this family of plants, 
the diflferent species including both shrubs and 
herbs. The scoberia, salicornia, and sua;da are 
mostly annuals with flat leaves, while the sarcobatus 
and spirostachys are shrubs. 
The dry plains contain sage-brush, rabbit-bush, 
and grease-wood. The flora of these flats are quite 
short-lived, and are composed chiefly of annuals. 
Among them are the little golden poppies, 
eschscholtzias, gillias, composita;, phlox, peucada- 
mun, and phacelias, which mature in a few weeks, 
ripen, and blow away, leaving no trace behind to 
cover the bare earth during the many dry months. 
The clothing of the foot-hills are shrubs, from 
two to four feet high. 
The higher slopes are covered with black-jack, a 
hardy scrub-oak. Lower down the gray sage-brush 
{Artemesia) , the green rabbit-bush (O'utierrezia), 
and grease-wood {Bigelovia) abound'. Carpeting 
the ground beneath these shrubs are many pretty 
flowers: penstemons, eriogomuns, lupines, wild 
onions, violets, stock flow-ers, salmon-colored pop- 
pies, purple astralagus, and a great variety of yellow 
and purple peucadamuns and varieties of composite. 
Advancing upward, we now consider the flora 
found on the slopes of the ranges facing the conti- 
nental divide; but what is true of the soil in a 
given altitude in this region, is, in a measure, true 
of the products of the soil at the same altitude 
throughout the Rocky Mountain system. The 
higher mountains are so variable in their flora- 
according to the moisture, soil, and position — that 
the species are very diversified. It contains most 
specimens of the forests, although the timber, as a 
rule, is almost exclusively evergreen. The mount- 
ains are magnificent during the flowering season, 
and "Solomon in all his glory" could never bear 
the shadow of a comparison, — asters, columbines, 
painted-cups, clematis, primrose, milk-vetch, the 
leaper, and many others. 
In the dryest portions of the country — dry hills 
and sandy plains — are found those parodies on the 
luscious fruits of the tropics, the cactaceiE, whose 
suggestive shapes, sharp needles, and delicately 
luxurious flowers are the delight, tantalizingly 
guarded, of the too confiding traveller. By using 
precaution, however, the beauty and sweets may be 
gathered and the thorns avoided. The prickly pears 
are very abundant, and have a beautiful bloom and 
edible fruit, with flat-lobed stems, resembling a 
leaf and shaped like a pear. The mammillaries are 
tubercled balls, each tubercle shielded by a bristling 
circle of needles defending the little ball on every 
side; and the stem, thrusting itself upward from 
the spaces between the tubercles, bears the most 
beautiful bell-shaped flowers, and the bloom is quite 
profuse. From the glow of the blood-red center 
the corolla shades to a pale pinkish tint at the tip 
of the fringed petals. These flowers only open in 
the warmth of the sun's rays, and close at night. 
The barrel cactus (echino cactus) is perfectly 
round, may be from one to four feet high, has 
neither leaf nor stem, and is provided with vertical 
or spiral ridges the entire length, about an inch 
apart; these ridges are furnished with formidable 
spines, which are often hooked. When standing 
out on the desert they look like a sentinel on guard. 
The flowers are less showy than those of the ball 
cactus. The bushel cactus is the most profuse 
bloomer, growing in a dense circular mass, often 
five score stems in a bunch. Out of each stem arise 
several blood-red flowers, so numerous that the 
plant takes the form of a pagoda of bloom, and 
seems some freak of beauty from the brain of the 
genii of the lamp in "Arabian Nights." 
One of the remarkable features of the distribution 
of the flora in New Mexico is, that the lofty mount- 
ain peaks, far distant and separated by arid, parched 
plains and alkaline wastes, have the same flora and 
the same distribution of flora at the same altitude, 
showing the height of the water; and, as the 
climatic changes swept on, period following period, 
the snow was surely disappearing, although it often 
fell low down upon the mountain sides. The lake 
drained by the turbid Rio Grande on the south and 
the Rio San Juan on the west, was drained of its 
vitality to swell the waters of the Gulf of Mexico 
on the one hand, while the rapid Colorado received 
the overplus on the other; and as the rivers wore 
away deeper and deeper canons for themselves, the 
water shrank and shrank, and as the snow disap- 
peared from the mountains, the forests climbed up 
the moist defiles and the bold spurs, and the warmth 
of the climate invited a semi-tropical luxuriance. 
Then, as the water shrank lower and lower, and the 
snow crept higher and higher, most of the deciduous 
trees, and most of the grasses and flowers, perished. 
The lake, in shrinking, left the mineral salts in 
such quantity in the lake that the animal life all 
perished, and the thousands and thousands of acres, 
left exposed were plains covered with alkali, in 
which no ordinary plants could grow. Sage-brush, 
grease-wood, and rabbit-bushes in time covered the 
land, and a variety of fescue grass. 
Therefore, from the Arctic zone to the tropics 
there are found the necessary conditions to produce 
a great variety of specimens representing each 
gradation of moisture, temperature, and soil. The 
Alpine flora at the high altitudes — evergreen and 
most specimens of deciduous trees and shrubs 
known in the temperate zone, and the mosses, ferns, 
and lichens to correspond, with a large variety 
of shrubs and plants. The crucifera;, leguminosa-, 
rosaceie, composita;, polemoniaceie, scrophulari- 
