324 A. G. Tansley. 
primitive eastern deciduous woodland, with a fine grove of hemlock 
spruce (Tsuga canadensis); and the beautiful valley of the stream 
which traverses the Garden is skilfully utilised for the arrangement 
of the herbaceous beds. The water-loving plants are on the 
margin of the stream, and the xerophilous on the dry summit 
of the ridge close to some fine glaciated rocks, while plants of 
intermediate water preferences occupy the slopes between. The 
taxonomic affinities of the various families are brought out by the 
arrangement of the beds along the valley. Dr. Britton, the 
accomplished Director of the Gardens, and Mrs. Britton, so 
well known by their genial hospitality to botanists visiting New 
York, and Professor Harper, entertained the members of the party. 
Leaving New York on the night of Wednesday, July 30th, the 
party made a stop at Niagara Falls on Thursday, and arrived at 
Chicago on the morning of Friday, August 1st. The international 
party was received by the staff of the well-known Botanical 
Department of the University, in the Botany Building, and after¬ 
wards entertained to lunch at the Quadrangle Club. Professor 
John M. Coulter, head of the Department, gave a short address 
of welcome, and then Professor Cowles delivered a short but 
exceedingly useful lecture on the physiographic and geological 
features of the Chicago region, indicating their relations to the 
vegetation and flora. The writer was amused by a remark made 
to him by an American botanist to the effect that whatever part 
of the United States one visited one was always told by the local 
botanist that this was a specially interesting region, because it was 
the meeting-point of two floras, the eastern and the western—or 
perhaps the northern and the southern—the obvious inference 
being that the conception of a “ northern ” or of a “ western ” 
flora gradually shifted as one moved south or east. There can he 
no doubt, however, as Professor Cowles insisted, that the Chicago 
region is, in a very real sense, the meeting-place of a northern and 
southern flora, and of an eastern and western vegetation. This 
means, of course, that there are actually a large number of species 
characteristic of the north or of the south which are found inter¬ 
mingled in this region, and that in Illinois and neighbouring 
States, the great eastern deciduous forest begins to give way to 
prairie. 
One of the greatest attractions of the Chicago neighbourhood 
to the ecologist is, of course, the magnificent series of sand-dunes 
on the southern and eastern shores of Lake Michigan, and a large 
