THE 



AMERICAN NATURALIST. 



ol. IX. — JULY, 1875. -No. 7. 



THE VEGETATION OF THE ILLINOIS LOWLANI 



The vegetable life of Illinois presents many points of general 

 interest, and these are nowhere else so prominent or peculiar as 

 over the broad, level tracks of moist land so often bordering the 

 large streams of the West. These lowlands or, as locally termed, 

 "bottom lands" or "river bottoms," are of very variable extent, 

 their limits being determined for each stream by the character of 

 the region through which it takes its course. In one part of the 

 river they are many rods in width and follow it for miles ; in an- 

 other they are narrow and soon end, and again they are wholly 

 wanting, as when bluffs come to the water's edge and form rocky 

 or gravelly banks. This is finely illustrated in Northern Illinois, 

 where along the Mississippi are high banks with many an out- 

 cropping cliff of Galena or Niagara limestone. These cliffs have 

 weathered into forms so strangely like half-ruined fortresses that 

 it is not easy to believe that yonder bit of wall, half concealed by 

 vines and shrubs, this crumbling turret, or those broken battle- 

 ments, are but rough masses of rock. In passing from the ex- 

 treme northern part of the state southward, we find the hilly, 

 uneven surface growing smoother and more like a rolling prairie, 

 which it finally becomes, and this in turn giving place to the dead 



