FLORA OF THE RED RIVER BASIN. 601 



United States, however, appeal's to be Phoenix, Ariz., where the records 

 of the years ISTD to 1881, inchisive, showed Ji, mean velocity of only 2.37 

 miles. 



FLORA OF THE BASIX OF THE RED KIVEK OF THE T^^ORTH. 



Upon every jjortion of the land area of the globe, the flora, or assem- 

 blage of species constituting its mantle of vegetation, is a very sensitive 

 register of its aggregate climatic conditions and of the value of its soil for 

 agriculture. In almost an equal deg'ree, also, the fauna, or representation 

 of animal life, testifies what the capabilities of the country will be for 

 pasturage and stock raising, and what crops will be successfully cultivated 

 by the farmer, even l)efore the coming of the axmau to fell tlie forest and 

 of the j)lowman to draw the first furrow on the pi'airie. The vast herds of 

 buft'alo^ and the frequent droves of antelope and elk which roameil over 

 this district j:)revious to the ad\'ent of the white man were a, prognostication 

 of the present ranchman's wealth of cattle, horses, and sheep, feeding in 

 the valleys and on the plains from which the native tall game and the abo- 

 riginal huntsman liave so recently vanished. The nutritious and abundant 

 grasses and otlier herbage on which the wild herds fed are now succeeded 

 b}' hixurant fields of grain, or, growing in the yet unbroken sward, they 

 now fatten the ])eef, rear the broncho and thoroughl)red horses, and produce 

 the wool, which are exported to Chicago and more eastern markets. 



Though no strongly defined line of division can be drawn between 

 different portions of tlie flora and fauna of the country from the Atlantic to 

 the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Sea, it is 



' The early immigrants found the bones of buifaloes scattered here and there throughout the 

 whole prairie region. Ou arcount of their commercial value for sugar refining and for the manufac- 

 ture of superphosphate, these bones were collected and sold at the railway stations during the first 

 two or three years after the railway was built into any new i>art of the country. A heap of bufi'alo 

 bones which I saw beside the railway awaiting shipment at Langdon, N. Dak., in August, 1889, meas- 

 ured 100 feet by 20 feet iu area, with an average height of 4 feet, representing i)robably two or three 

 thousand animals. During the saiue month I saw a much larger pile of bones at Minot, in the same 

 State, its contents being estimated as e(jual to 200 feet by 30 feet by 4 feet. The dealer inforuied me 

 that the weight of this pile was about 600 tons, and that during the preceding jiart of the year he 

 had purchased and already shipped some 1,200 tons, the average price iiaid being $8 per ton. During 

 the one forenoon when I was there, ten or more wagonloads of bones were brought in by the farmers 

 from the region around. Probably nearly all that could be found in the vicinity Were collected during 

 that year. (Compare page 139, and Geology of Minnesota, Vol. II, p. 516.) 



