282 REPORT UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 
Below the mouth of Gardiner's River flic Yellowstone flows for 8 miles 
in a sage valley containing enough grass to make it fair grazing land, 
while grass extends up the slopes of the limiting ranges for nearly 1,000 
feet, when if is replaced by timber. 
Below this valley follows the second cafiou, where the wooded moun- 
tain slopes come close down to the river's margin. This is succeeded 
by a long, broad, grassy valley, extending down to the lower cation, a 
distance of 29 miles. This open valley has an average width of 4 to 5 
miles. On the east it extends to the base of the Yellowstone Range, and 
on the west to that of the Gallatin Range, which here separates the Yel- 
lowstone from the Gallatin River. This valley contains at present a 
small ranch population. 
Below this fine valley is the short lower canon, where the river has 
carved a passage through a bare ridge connecting the limiting ranges. 
Below this an open, grassy country extends down the river to the bend 
to the eastward, and up the valley of Shield's River, a large, left hand 
branch, nearly to its head. 
All the open country on the drainage of the Yellowstone is suscepti- 
ble of being easily burned over. The soil is almost everywhere more 
or less gravelly or sandy; nowhere a heavy clay. 
The Madison River, like the Yellowstone, heads in the high, heavily- 
timbered country of the Yellowstone Park, opposite the heads of the 
Snake. Its drainage area is timbered as far north as the seeond canon, 
below the mouths of its east and south forks. The valleys of these 
streams, too, are heavily timbered. 
From the foot of the second canon, northward to the lower canon 
the Madison Valley consists almost entirely of a succession of terraces 
of gravelly soil, covered with grass and sage. This valley has a length 
of 50 miles and an average width of G or 7 miles. On either hand is a 
high range of mountains, timbered almost to their bases. All this val- 
ley can easily be burned over. 
The lower canon of the Madison is cut iu sparsely timbered hills, be- 
low which the river enters the broad expanse known as the Gallatin 
Valley. This fine large basin, second to none in Montana for agricul- 
tural and grazing purposes, save perhaps that of the Bitterroot, has a 
total length of 32 miles, with a width of 23. It extends southward from 
the forks of the Missouri, up the Madison and Gallatin Rivers to the 
north ends of the Gallatin and Madison Ranges, and from the East Gal- 
latin westward beyond the MadisonRiver. The streams which traverse 
it are the Madison, the Gallatin, and several large branches of the latter, 
among which are Middle Creek, Bozeman Creek, and the East Gallatin 
River. These streams have broad bottom-lands, covered with grasses 
and scattered groves of cottonwoods and willows. 
The valley is covered with a fine growth of bunch-grass and some 
sage. Probably the entire area of the valley can easily be burned over. 
The Gallatin and its branches above this valley are in close canon in 
a heavily-timbered mountain country. 
