TORREYA 



LIBRARY 



NEW ^'-■ 

 HOT A 



Vol. 20 No. 4 



July-August, 1920 



SOUTHERN LOUISIANA FROM THE CAR-WINDOW 



By Roland M. Harper 



Louisiana is one of the two states in the Lhiion that is all coastal 

 plain (Florida being the other). The southern half of the state, 

 although essentially flat and hardly anywhere more than 150 feet 

 above sea-level, has considerable diversity of soil, which is re- 

 flected in the vegetation as well as in the population and agricul- 

 tural features. The agricultural regions of the state were well 

 mapped and described by Dr. E. W. Hilgard in the fifth volume 

 of the Tenth Census, 1884, and the same divisions with slight 

 modifications were used in a report on forest conditions in Louis- 

 iana by J. H. Foster (U. S. Forest Service Bull. 114. 1912*), 

 and in a colored " Phytogeographic map of Louisiana," on a scale 

 of about 18 miles to the inch, which has been issued in several 

 editions in recent years by the State Department of Agriculture 

 and Immigration. xA.dditional geographical details can be found 

 in the soil surveys of several parishes and similar areas published 

 by the U. S. Department of Agriculture, and in Water Supply 

 and Irrigation Paper loi of the U. S. Geological Survey, on the 

 underground waters of southern Louisiana, by G. D. Harris and 

 others (1904 ), which contains among other things a map showing 

 the distribution of forests, prairies and marshes in the neighbor- 

 hood of Lake Charles. 



Existing descriptions of the vegetation of southern Louisiana 

 are not very numerous or voluminous. There are of course a 

 few local lists of plants, and monographic works that cite Louis- 



' j * Reviewed, with a reduced copy of the map, in Geog. Review 2 : 475-476. 



. Dec. igi6. 



\^^ [No. 3, Vol. 20, of ToRREVA, comprising pp. 37-65, was issued 18 July 1920.] 



K^ 67 



