The Midland Naturalist 
* PUBLISHED BI-MONTHLY FROM THE BIOLOGICAL 
LABORATORIES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME 
Vol. I. APRIL, 1909. No. 1.” 
Editorial Announcement. 
The Middle Western States considered: geologically, topo- 
graphically, and climatologically, form a great natural province, 
showing points of marked contrast with the region of the Eastern 
and Middle States on the East, and that of the elevated Rocky 
Mountain Plains on the West ; in some respects connecting the two, 
yet geographically distinct from both. 
Our region of the Prairies, including as it does the several 
states which in some part touch the shores of Lakes Michigan and 
Superior, together with the land-locked Missouri and Iowa, and 
extending westward only to the middle part of Kansas or Nebraska 
and of the Dakotas, from the days that it first began to be known, 
a hundred years ago and more, has been noted as geographically a 
peculiar region. The distribution of the diverse forms of living 
thingsin nature is largely governed by geographic limitation. Every 
continent, and every subdivision of every continent, has its own 
kinds of plants and animals. Biological types are modified and 
diversified according to circumstances of topography, soil, climate; 
and our prairie country was noted from the first as the habitat of 
certain animals and plants not found at all in the region from the 
Allegheny Mountains eastward, nor yet in the South beyond the 
Ohio River. 
In zoology we have no descriptive handbooks readily available 
showing the peculiarities of Midland animal life and form, but in 
botany happily it is otherwise. Here the earliest manuals credit 
many peculiar and interesting type-plants to the region of the 
prairies exclusively. In the earlier issues e aprons es -— 
Asa Gray's familiar books, such type 
to no part of the United States but the Prairie States of the valley 
of the upper Mississippi and westward : 
* April 15, 1909. - Pages 1 to 28. 
