THE SLIME MOULDS OF NEW MEXICO. 
BY T. H. MACBRIDE. 
No flora of the world has lately so much occupied the 
attention of botanists as that which they term xerophytic, 
the flora of the desert. This, for several reasons. In the 
first place, all deserts are now more easily accessible. The 
rush of commercial enterprise has at last penetrated every 
corner of the globe; even the deserts have been exploited 
and the way of the naturalist is made plain as never be- 
fore. In the second place, this very circumstance makes 
possible now the study of desert-life as a whole, a thing 
hitherto impossible. True, in the days gone by, thanks to 
Parry, Pringle and others of the type, the flora of desert 
regions was not without representation more or less com- 
plete in the herbaria of the world, but even where most 
complete the several species were viewed as isolated speci- 
mens, strange enough no doubt; but no closet-student of 
such things had any idea of their profound meaning, of 
their wondrous association with each other in the land of 
their native habitat, of the significance of ten thousand 
minor adaptations vv^hich make a land and its flora kin, 
perfectly unintelligible and unmeaning unless seen 
together and in mass. 
To one who thus attempts the flora of the North Ameri- 
can deserts, a surprise will come, first perhaps in the 
profuse variety which marks a land of apparent inhospi- 
table sameness. Every form of vegetable life that finds 
expression anywhere has a place, too, by some representa- 
tive or other in the desert. There are trees, there are 
shrubs; there are vines, there are herbs; there are mosses 
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