RAMBLES OF A BOTANIST IN WYOMING TERRITORY. 33 
gorgeous with flowers of many colors, and we are impatient to see 
what they are. The whistle sounds, and the train slackens speed, 
until the leap may be made with safety, and we alight. The train 
moves on and soon passes from our sight, and we are alone but 
for the distant companionship of a beautiful herd of antelope 
which graze upon a near hill-side, a jack-rabbit, and a colony of 
prairie dogs. But we were landed just on the south side of a line 
of snow fence, where the snows drifted deep last winter, and so 
moistened the ground that the flowers and grasses of June are here 
to be found in greatest luxuriance. Let us see what we have. 
Very conspicuous are some yellow heads of a composite, borne 
upon tall and slender scapes, and waving with the grasses in the 
wind. At the base of each stem is a rosette of narrow, somewhat 
silky leaves, and the plant is Actinella scaposa Nutt. 
In the winter season, on the hill-tops near Cheyenne, we had 
noticed some close tufts of mossy-green, sharp-pointed leaves, and 
here we find the very plant in bloom. It has sent up numerous 
branching stems, two inches or more in height, bearing rather large, 
sandwort-like flowers. It proves to be Arenaria Hookeri Nutt., a 
rare species as well asa handsome one. The truly elegant little As- 
tragalus ceespitosus, which a month ago was barely beginning to 
show bloom, is not yet gone by, and here we gather lovely speci- 
mens of it with the rest, and then pass on over and between various 
hills and bluffs, and out upon the clear green nepense of plains, 
toward the metropolis of Wyoming. 
Now we are in the midst of a dense patch of wild peas, of a 
low growth, hairy leaves, and very large purple flowers ; a form of 
Lathyrus polymorphus Nutt.; and a plant scarcely inferior in 
beauty to the best of the cultivated species of this genus. 
Yonder is a slight depression in the surface of the plain, where 
there was more moisture in early spring. The whole spot of 
ground is colored dark dull red, not with flowers, but with the large 
showy fruits of Rumex venosus Pursh. Two species of Pentstemon 
are especially attractive among the flowers of this region; P. cris- 
tatus Nutt., with very large pale purple flowers, in a short rather 
one-sided raceme, and P. albidus, with smaller and almost white co- 
rollas, arranged in alongraceme. The latter species is abundant, 
almost whitening long lines of ridges. A very fine perennial lupine, 
whose specific name I cannot venture to give, with blue and black 
flowers borne in large dense spikes, is very noticeable on the stony 
AMERICAN NATURALIST, VOL. VIII. 3 
