12 BOTANY OF MADISON, LINCOLN, GARRARD, 



reasonable share. There is enough of it in the small patches 

 of trees left here and there to give some idea ol its original 

 imposing features. There were usually over this series argil- 

 laceous soils with but little loam; but where the. rich leaf-mold 

 had been collected in deep hollows and on the protected 

 northern slopes, some other species prevailed over the white 

 oak. 



Middle Hudson River Beds.— This division of rocks 



and soils followed the contour of the last-mentioned group, 

 and was almost universally characterized by the presence of 

 beeches. In places, these trees were equal to at least ninety 

 per cent, of all the individuals in the woods. Usually, how- 

 ever, there were many yellow poplars, and in these soils they 

 attained their largest size and their best quality. No tret! in 

 the State had grown to larger proportions than this, the most 

 valued here of all the soft woods. Sometimes where tin; inter- 

 calated limestones of these beds spread out for some distance, 

 sugar maples grew in thick set clumps, and the finest sugar 

 orchards we have ever seen were on these soils. In certain 

 places, also, were to be seen more or less white; oak ; but 

 taking it all together, it was preeminently a vast beech forest. 



Upper Hudson River Beds.— It is but few steps from 



the Middle on to the Upper Hudson River beds ; and with 

 those steps was an almost absolute change in the distribution 

 of the trees. At the base was a return to the conditions 

 existing in the Blue Grass beds — the presence of the rich, 

 black, calcareous soils, and an absence of those deep silicious 

 clays which marked the growth of beech, poplar, and white 

 oak. In their place were long stretches of blur ash, white 

 oak. wild cherry, scaly-bark hickory, yellow chestnut oak, 

 while walnut, and hackberry. The white oak, beech, and 

 poplar were almost absent over these soils, and the distribu- 

 tion very much like, but still distinct from, that of the Blue 

 Grass beds. But it may be repeated here, that those two 

 soils are the best in the State, and that the distribution of the 

 timbers, mentioned in connection with them, marked the out- 



