241 



Arctium minus. Burdock. Very common along irrigation 



ditches. 

 Centaurea solstitialis. Star Thistle. Occasionally found in West 



Salt Lake. 

 Matricaria suavolens. Pineapple Weed. Abundant in waste 



places. 



High School, 



Salt Lake City, Utah 



FIVE HUNDRED MILES THROUGH THE 

 APPALACHIAN VALLEY 



By Roland M. Harper 



The shortest railroad route between Washington and New 

 Orleans, namely, via Lynchburg, Bristol and Chattanooga, 

 1,1 18 miles, passes for just about half this distance through the 

 Appalachian Valley, which lies at the northwestern- base of the 

 Blue Ridge. The route crosses the Blue Ridge and enters the 

 valley (there known as the Shenandoah Valley) a few miles east 

 of Roanoke, Virginia, and passes out of it into the coastal plain 

 at its extreme southwestern end, near Woodstock, Alabama. 



The Appalachian Valley is underlaid by much folded and 

 faulted Paleozoic strata, mostly Cambrian, Ordovician and 

 Silurian, varying lithologically from limestone and dolomite to 

 shale and sandstone, and giving rise to a great variety of soils, 

 among which reddish and yellowish clayey loams seem to pre- 

 dominate. It averages about fifty miles wide, and contains 

 many longitudinal ridges, some of these rising to about 2,500 

 feet above sea-level, but never exceeding in height the mountains 

 bordering the valley. The highest elevations are in Virginia, 

 but the ridges seem to stand out more conspicuously in Alabama, 

 where the intervening valleys are lower. Between Pulaski and 

 Wytheville, Va., at an elevation of about 2,000 feet, the railroad 

 crosses a region of Lower Carboniferous sandstone, with topog- 

 raphy and vegetation strongly resembling that of the Cumber- 

 land Plateau to the westward; but elsewhere the scenery is 



