69 



Orleans came in July, 191 5, when on the way from Florida to 

 California.' Leaving New Orleans shortly before midnight of 

 the thirteenth on the main line of the Southern Pacific system 

 (which operates in Louisiana under the aliases of Morgan's 

 Louisiana & Texas R. R., and Louisiana Western), I traveled in 

 a day coach so as to be able to begin taking notes as soon as there 

 was light enough, although that deprived me of any protection 

 from mosquitoes (for it would hardly be worth while to put 

 screens on a car that runs all the way from New Orleans to Los 

 Angeles and is exposed to mosquitoes only about one tenth of the 

 distance). Daybreak (about 4:30 a.m.) on the 14th found me 

 at Lafayette, 145 miles from New Orleans and just west of the 

 alluvial bottoms of the Mississippi delta. The mosquitoes which 

 had made sleep impossible during the night soon disappeared, and 

 as the locomotive used oil for fuel there was nothing to interfere 

 with botanical observations except the speed of the train and my 

 unfamiliarity with some of the plants. Lake Charles, the me- 

 tropolis of southwestern Louisiana, was passed a little before 7 

 o'clock, and the Sabine River at the western border of the state, 

 about 7 :45. 



A little over three years later, when on the way to Texas on 

 an errand for the U. S. Bureau of Plant Industry, I crossed 

 Louisiana by a different route, a little farther north. On the 

 afternoon of August 19, 1918, I went from New Orleans to Baton 

 Rouge by the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley R. R., and on the 20th 

 from Baton Rouge westward to the Sabine River and beyond by 

 the New Orleans, Texas &: ^lexico Ry. (Gulf Coast Lines, for- 

 merly a part of the Frisco System), which uses the Y. & M. V. 

 tracks southeast of Baton Rouge and the Kansas City Southern 

 from DeQuincy, La., to Beaumont, Tex., and burn oil like the 

 Southern Pacific and several other southwestern railroads. The 

 two trips together took me through four or five different kinds 

 of country, whose vegetation will be sketched below. 



The flood-plain and delta of the Mississippi River have gen- 

 erally been mapped as a unit in Louisiana, except for the separa- 

 tion of the treeless marshes near the coast from the originally 

 densely wooded portion farther inland. There are some sig- 



