OF ARKANSAS. 341 



Oak and Black Jack, the White, the Red, and the Spanish Oaks, even the 

 Mockernut, continue to appear mixed with them, just as they are on the 

 hills formed of the Millstone Grit in Crawford County. Only on the quartz 

 barrens these species are stunted or always of small size, as when they 

 cover the cherty limestone of the Korth. Along the creeks, which run 

 between the hills, or divides, of the metamorphic region of South Pulaski 

 County, the flats or bottoms are also marshy, and have for natural vegeta- 

 tion the Black Jack, the Willow, and the "Water Oaks. And the lowest 

 hills formed of the red shales, which appear to have been less influenced 

 by metamorphic agency than the sandstone, preserve with their color and 

 the fertility of their soil the trees which characterize them in the western 

 counties. Between Little Rock and the Hot Springs, the plantations are 

 scarce, and only established on the bottom land of the rivers, when they 

 are not too wet and have not become flats. 



TIIE HOT SPRINGS AND HOT SPRINGS COUNTY. 



The vegetation of the Hot Springs, which, by constant deposit of their 

 water, have formed a hill of tufa, perforated with the numerous small 

 openings and basins of their water, demands a separate examination. The 

 surface of this calcareous formation is constantly modified, either by erosion 

 of the water running down its steep declivity or by addition of new matter. 

 It is thus nearly barren and naked in some places. Two species of ever- 

 greens have invaded this peculiar ground: the Youpon or Cassena (a 

 species generally inhabiting the sandy coasts of the South), and the Juni- 

 per. Few other woody plants grow on the hill of the Hot Springs. Only 

 two or three stunted specimens of the Quercitron, of the Ironwood, and a 

 single tree of the Red Maple. Small plants, especially mosses, which are 

 the first plants attacking a naked rock to decompose it and change it into 

 humus, cover most of its surface, especially in places irrigated by the hot 

 w r ater of the springs. The species mentioned here are not interesting in a 

 practical, but remarkable in a scientific point of view, because they show r 

 the growth of some of those small plants to be independent of temperature. 

 The most common of all is Reboullia hemispheric a (Rad.), a species of the 

 Liverwort family, and for the mosses, Bartramia radicalism Bryum argen- 

 teum, Barbula unguiculata and Fissidens taxifolius. From the family of the 

 Ferns, there is a kind of Maidenhair (Adiantum Capillus- Veneris L. and 

 Gheilanilies Alabamensis), and from the Phaenogamous herbaceous plants, 

 the Wild Senna, the Three-leaved Stonecrop, the Lyre-leaved Sage, the 

 great Lobelia, and Ilerpestis nigrescens, all plants growing so near the hot 

 water of the springs that their roots necessarily are immersed in it. More 

 removed from the influence of the hot water, the French Mulberry, the 



