THE BOTANY OF ARKANSAS. 245 



On the Arkansas the immediate flood plains or bars are 

 sandy or muddy, according to the swiftness of the current in 

 high water ; are too moist for cultivation, devoid of trees, and 

 have a scanty herbaceous vegetation. These flood plains 

 appear to be the first resting places of many of the introduced 

 weeds. 



The uplands are hills a few hundred feet in height, sepa- 

 rated by deep valleys. Most of the rivulets that come down 

 the hillsides are dry in summer, so that nowhere were seen 

 those moss-covered, verdant, wet ravines so frequently met 

 with in mountainous districts. 



When the hills are rocky they are practically covered by 

 one immense forest, the land having been cleared only in 

 patches here and there. The soil of the hills is often of sand- 

 stone origin and varies in its vegetation according to its depth. 

 On the summits of some of the hills, where the soil is thin and 

 the sandstone crops out or lies near the surface, the timber is 

 light, the commonest and most characteristic tree being the 

 black jack {Quercus nigra). 



For the most part, however, the upland sandstone soil is 

 deeper and bears a heavy growth of valuable timber. The 

 short-leaved pine, post oak, white oak and hickory are the 

 most valuable trees. At the present time much of this timber 

 is wasted by girdling the trees, and after a few years burning 

 the dead trunks, for the sake of clearing the land for agricul- 

 tural purposes. " Deadenings," as they are called, of twenty 

 acres or more, with corn planted among the standing trunks, 

 are a common sight. 



Besides the sandstone soil of the uplands, there is in many 

 localities a limestone soil. The vegetation of these districts 

 is markedly different from that of similarly situated sandstone 

 soils. These differences are given below. Such land, when 

 cleared, is well adapted for grovving wheat. 



It must be kept in mind that these observations on the 

 kinds of soil met with apply merely to the region passed 



