214 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 



The Plains and Prairies. 



The first region to be considered, that of the prairies, 

 the great plains, and the deserts of the inland basin, may 

 be very briefly noticed, since, although of considerable 

 interest to the botanist, it is only occasionally that plants, 

 remarkable for beauty of flower or other conspicuous 

 characteristics, are met with. The eastern portion of the 

 district, where the rich prairie lands of Kansas and Nebraska 

 are being rapidly cultivated, produces many fine flowering 

 plants wherever some steep or rocky slope has escaped 

 cultivation. Here we find abundance of yuccas intermin- 

 gled with blue, pink and white-flowered spider-worts, 

 handsome large -flowered penstemons, baptisias with large 

 pea-like flowers of blue, yellow or white, many species of 

 astragalus, yellow and white evening-primroses and other 

 allied forms, several cactuses of the genera opuntia and 

 mammillaria, blue larkspurs, pink oxalises, the purple Phlox 

 divaricata, mallows of the genera Malvastrum and Callirhoe, 

 some of which are well-known garden plants, and a host of 

 sunflowers, asters, cone-flowers, golden-rods, coreopsis, and 

 many other showy composites. This is the region of the 

 buffalo or bunch grasses which formed the chief subsistence 

 of the American bison. They are fine-tufted bluish grasses. 

 much resembling in appearance our fine-leaved bent grass 

 (Agrostis setacea), which is common on the heaths about 

 Bournemouth and in Dorsetshire. I was informed that since 

 the bisons had been destroyed the buffalo grass was also 

 disappearing, being replaced by various coarser growing 

 plants and grasses. It is probable that the uniform 

 hardening of the surface by the tread of the herds of bison, 

 together with the equally regular manuring, favoured the 

 growth of this particular form of grasses. 



As we travel westwards, towards the Rocky Mountains, 

 the plains become more arid, and in places the vegetation 

 resembles that of the deserts of the great basin. Here 

 there are fewer conspicuous flowers, and a preponderance 

 of dwarf creeping plants, with a few thorny bushes and 

 some species of wormwood, forming the well-known " sage- 



