AES We 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
Vol. IV.— DECEMBER, 1870.— No. 10. 
CTP ORDOD > 
THE FLORA OF THE PRAIRIES. 
BY J. A. ALLEN. 
PnosasLY the vegetation of no two adjoining regions, 
both of which are situated between the same parallels of 
latitude and at nearly the same height above the sea, presents 
greater differences than exist between the vegetation of the 
fertile prairies of the Mississippi Valley. and the forest re- 
gion that extends from their eastern border to the Atlantic 
coast. To one who has always lived amid the diversified 
scenery of the Eastern or Middle States, where distant 
mountains almost everywhere bound the view, and forest- 
crowned hills and cultivated valleys so agreeably alternate as 
to dispel the possibility of monotony, a first view of the 
primitive prairies, — 
** The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,” 
as Bryant has so felicitously described them, which 
* stretch 
In airy undulations far away 
the ocean, in his gentlest swell, 
Stood still, with is rounded billows fixed 
And motionless forever," — 
is extremely novel and full of interest. But the prairies, 
“unshorn” of their primitive wildness will soon be things of 
the past, so great are the attractions they hold forth to the 
emigrant, and so rapid the transformation that follows their 
oes disks cM E AR ML 
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* AMER. NATURALIST, VOL. IV. 78 . (577) 
