_ about noonday, and we are but ten miles from Cheyenne. There 
- of w — on foot; for these bluffs and table-lands are no’ 
our eyes tell us. Is it possible that all this is Nuttall’s Oxytropis 
— little half-starved stranger where we found it then; but here it is 
-and has collected fruit as well as flowers. All our Rocky Moun- i 
a great variety of flowers at this high altitude. We must wait 
_ glory. 
the high lands of Wyoming. We pass the boundary line between 
32 RAMBLES OF A BOTANIST IN WYOMING TERRITORY. 
but it is not their habit to grow so thickly as to color the whole 
face of several acres, for taking a glance up and down the stream 
we behold the gravel beds everywhere purple with the same 
abundance of bloom. After waiting just a moment in order to en- 
joy the pure delight of a happy anticipation, we hasten down the 
steep bluff side, and find ourselves scarcely able to believe what 
multiceps, one of the most rare and charming of all the plants that — 
are peculiar to the Rocky Mountains? A plant hitherto rarely 
met with at all, and only on a few alpine summits in Colorado — 
and Montana. The year before, we had taken a few depauperate 
specimens, in seed only, on one of the Colorado Mountains, and 
had prized even those poor ones very highly. It grew like a poor — 
luxuriant and plentiful, and this Wyoming region is doubtless its _ 
proper home. Passing up to the bluffs of the other side, a half — 
mile or so away, we find two or three other very interesting little 
leguininous plants, Astragalus sericoleucus, a silky-white, spreading 
vetchling with purple flowers, and also the more rare Astragalus — 
cespitosus, the latter scarcely yet in full flower; and finally an- 
other, with silky-white foliage, and most splendid racemes of 
purple. Of this plant we found but one root, out of which we 
made half a dozen herbarium specimens, but it proves to be N ut- 
tall’s O. Lagopus. It was thought to be a species yet undescribed ; _ 
a r ee ee ae 
Dr. C. C. Pàrry has this season found the same farther northward, 
tain species of this genus are beautiful, and this rare one is among 
the finest. i 
But the middle of May is rather too early in the season to find — 
about another four weeks, if we are to see these plains in all their : 
ti i noy me 20th of June, and we are ascending the grade of 7 
the Denver Pacitic Railway from the lower plains of Colorado, t 
Blas 
the two territories, just as the highest point is reached. It is noW i 
is plenty of time for a botanist to reach the city before night, and 
"r beg of our conductor the privilege of making the remainder 
