252 “The Plains” of Michigan. (March, a 
land are even more abundant than the pines and oaks, Like them, i 
too, they are making an exceedingly rapid growth, and in a very 
few years after a fire they have covered the ground with anew 
forest and are stretching upwards with marvelous haste, as if to 
cover in the shortest possible time the blackened deformity ofthe 
charred remains about them. Like the scrub pine they are wait: 
ing for the demands of some great industry to turn their immense 
growth of material to profitable account. ‘J 
Besides the scrub pines, oaks and poplars, which constitute the _ 
most prominent and almost universal arboreal feature of the 
plains, various other trees and shrubs are scattered here and there. 
The wild cherry, both black and red, the choke-cherry and sande 
cherry are all here, and the prairie willow (Salix humilis), is always 
to be found, though seldom very thickly distributed. Sweet-fera 
(Comptonia asplenifolia),and brakes (Pieris aquilina), grow in gre 
abundance over the entire region, and with them, spread like 
carpet over the sands, are the bear-berry and winter-green 
trailing arbutus, all uniting, by the extension of roots and 
cay of stems and leaves, in the grand effort made by nature to 
claim the soil, Then, as if to relieve the monotony of this ¢ 
stant and rather somber background, there are thrown in patei 
of bright bluebells, the wild orange-red lily, here and there a ha 
weed or Solidago, or the bright umbels of a stray pleurisy- 
and, once in a while, one of the rarer northern plants, Suc’ ast 
three-toothed cinquefoil, serving to keep the traveler, if he l 
to be a botanist, on a constant and expectant lookout for 5 
thing new. — ! 
The species that have been mentioned by no means com p 
list, but they serve to show what are the constant and che 
istic features of the vegetation of the plains. Although very™ 
more species will be found in a “flora” of these regio 
constantly impressed with the uniformity and lack © 
which characterize their vegetable productions. Wi 
Nature’s most persistent efforts to clothe the barest 
earth with a living mantle, it has been found, ap 
only certain kinds of plants can be made to do duty © 
barren spots, and, accordingly, those have been chosen that 
ish in places the most uncongenial and hopeless. 
- Two most valuable species have been reserved tor 
mention, partly because they do not strictly belong t 
