The botany of our Pacific states (California and Oregon), so far as it is known, reveals no nearer affinity to that of Quito—although the near relatives of Californian plants, when they have any in other lands, are in the Mexican plateau. Quito has plenty of Bignoniads, Acanthads and Lobelias; on our Pacific slope there are none. In Quito the Compositæ are mainly Heleniæ ; on our Pacific coast there are few, if any, Heleniæ, but the order tends chiefly to Senecionidæ.

The recent researches of Griesbach prove the absence of temperate American species or types of plants on the loftier mountains of the West Indian Islands. These rise in Jamaica to eight thousand feet, and yet with the exception of a few naturalized plants, as Fragaria resca, Ranunculus repens, etc., we find scarcely any North American temperate genera or species. Of nearly eleven hundred West Indian genera, only thirty are decidedly northern. This almost total absence of typical North American plants in the highlands of the West Indies, is a feature incompatible with their having shared in the effects of a glacial migration.*

[Parts I and II of these "Contributions" are given in Volume V of the NATURALIST, commencing on pages 619 and 693. — EDS.

* Appendix. The Weasel, M. aureoventris Gray, mentioned on p. 622, Vol. v, is probably from the Valley. The following Birds should be added to the list given in the NATURALIST, Oct. 1871, Vol. v, p. 623; —

NOTES ON THE VEGETATION OF THE LOWER

WABASH VALLEY.

BY ROBERT RIDGWAY.

1. THE FORESTS OF THE BOTTOM LANDS.

THAT portion of the valley of the Wabash River and its tributaries lying south of latitude about 38° 25' contains a sylva peculiarly rich, and also remarkable for combining within one area many of the characteristic trees, as well as other plants, of the northern, southern and southwestern portions of the United States, besides supporting the vegetation common to the whole Atlantic region or "Eastern Province." In this section of the country many species of the botanical districts named, in receding from their several centres of abundance, overlap each other, or reach their latitudinal or longitudinal limits of natural distribution; thus with the beech, sugar maple, the various oaks and other trees of the north, grow the bald cypress, the tupelo gum and the water locust of the south, and the catalpa and pecan of the southwest; while other trees such as the buckeyes, honey locust, black locust, coffee-bean, etc., especially characteristic of the country west of the Alleghanies, reach here their maximum of abundance. At the same time other trees of more extended distribution, grow scarcely anywhere else to such majestic size as they do here in the rich alluvial bottoms, the deep soil of which nourishes black walnuts, tulip trees, sycamores, white ashes and sweet gums of astonishing dimensions.

The mixed woods of the lower Wabash Valley consist of upwards of ninety species of trees, including all of those which reach a maximum height of over twenty feet; these are distributed through about twenty-five orders and fifty genera. In the heavy forests of the rich bottom lands more than sixty species usually grow together, though in various localities different species are the predominating ones.

The trees which usually attain the largest size are the following species, named nearly in the order of their maximum size:sycamore (Platanus occidentalis), tulip-poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera), pecan (Carya oliveformis), over-cup or bur-oak (Quercus

macrocarpa), "Spanish oak" (Q. coccinea var?), white ash (Fraxinus Americana), bald cypress (Taxodium distichum), sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua), black walnut (Juglans nigra), white elm (Ulmus Americana), honey locust (Gleditschia triacanthos), cottonwood (Populus monilifera), beech (Fagus ferruginea), shellbark hickory (Carya alba?), and white oak (Quercus alba). All of these often exceed one hundred and fifty feet in height, while the first three are known to go beyond one hundred and seventy-five feet, and no doubt sometimes nearly approach, if they do not actually reach, the altitude of two hundred feet. The principal trees of the second magnitude (i. e. which do not often grow more than one hundred feet high, and are more usually seventy feet and upwards), are hickories (Carya sulcata, C. amara, C. tomentosa and C. porcina), red oak (Quercus rubra), water oak or pin oak (Q. palustris), swamp white oak (Q. bicolor), swamp chestnut oak (Q. prinos), linden or bass-wood (Tilia Americana), sweet buckeye (Esculus flava), sugar maple (Acer saccharinum), red maple (A. rubrum), silver maple (A. dasycarpum), black locust (Robinia pseudacacia), coffee-bean (Gymnocladus Canadensis), water locust (Gleditschia monosperma), black cherry (Prunus serotina), sour and tupelo gum (Nyssa multiflora and N. uniflora), blue ash (Fraxinus quadrangulata), black ash (Fraxinus sambucifolia), hackberries (Celtis occidentalis and C. Mississippiensis), black and yellow birches (Betula nigra and B. lenta), etc. Some of these trees, as the oaks and hickories, occasionally attain a very large size, equalling those of the first magnitude; but as a general thing, they do not grow much, if any, beyond one hundred feet in height.

The more abundant or characteristic of the middle-sized trees, or those usually growing from forty to seventy feet in height, are the following:-box elder (Negundo aceroides), fœtid buckeye (Esculus glabra), persimmon (Diospyros Virginicus), catalpa (Catalpa bignonioides), red ash (Fraxinus pubescens), sassafras (Sassafras officinale), red or slippery elm (Ulmus fulva), winged elm (U. alata), mulberry (Morus rubra), butternut, or white walnut (Juglans cinerea), post oak (Quercus obtusiloba—not frequent in the bottomlands), willow oak (Q. phellos-rare), and laurel oak (Quercus · imbricaria). The underwoods, composed of small trees from twenty to forty feet in height, are chiefly of the following species: pawpaw (Asimina triloba), prickly ash (Xanthoxylum America

num), hop tree (Ptelea trifoliata), stag-horn, smooth and poison sumaes (Rhus typhina, R. glabra and R. venenata), redbud (Cercis Canadensis), wild plums and choke cherries (Prunus Americana, P. Pensylvanica and P. Virginiana), hawthorns, or "red haws” (Crataegus coccinea, C. tomentosa, C. crus-galli, and C. flara), crab apple (Pyrus coronaria), June berry (Amelanchier Canadensis,) witch hazel (Hamamelis Virginica), dogwoods (Cornus florida and C. alternifolia), Viburnum (Viburnum lentago), black haw (F. prunifolium), green ash (Fraxinus viridis), iron-wood, or hop hornbeam (Ostrya Virginica), hornbeam, or water beech (Carpinus Americanus), etc.

The shrubby undergrowth or "underbush" is extremely varied and often so dense as to be nearly, if not quite, impenetrable. In the bottom lands it is composed in the main of spice bush (Lindera benzoin and L. melissa folia?) and buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), which are the predominating species, the former generally distributed, and the latter mainly confined to the banks and ends of lagoons; but both are mingled with other shrubs far too numerous in species to mention, or nearly replaced by dense brakes of the small cane (Arundinaria tecta), and rank herbaceous plants, in almost endless variety.

In the heavy forests of the bottom-lands, which in many places have entirely escaped the ravages of the axe, the magnitude of the timber is such as is unknown to the scant woods of the eastern states, the stiff monotonous pineries of the north or the scrubby growth of other portions. The river flows for the greater part between dense walls of forest, which stand up to the very banks, and generally screened in front with a dense fringe of willows, with a belt of cottonwood and sycamores behind it. Viewing this forest wall from the opposite side of the river, there is seen a compact mass of verdure, the trunks of the trees being often hidden by the fronting belt of willows, which are often overrun by luxuriant masses of wild grape or other vines, often falling down to the very water's edge, so that even the bank itself is wholly concealed. If the forest is viewed from a high bluff, it presents the appearance of a compact, level sea of green, apparently almost endless, but bounded by the line of wooded bluffs three to seven miles back from the river; the tree-tops swaying with the passing breeze, and the general level broken by occasional giant trees which rear their massive heads so as to overlook the surrounding miles of

forest. The approximate height above the ground beneath of the average tree-top level is about one hundred and thirty feetthe lowest estimate after a series of careful measurements-while the occasional, and by no means infrequent, "monarchs" which often tower apparently for one-third their height above the treetop line, attain an altitude of more than one hundred and eighty feet, or approach two hundred feet.

Of the ninety to a hundred species of trees of the lower Wabash Valley, about seventy exceed the height of forty feet; forty-six (perhaps fifty) exceed seventy feet in height, and about thirty are known to reach or exceed the height of one hundred feet. Of the latter class, as many as nine are known certainly to reach, or even exceed, the altitude of one hundred and fifty feet, while four of them (sycamore, tulip-poplar, pecan and sweet gum), attain, or go beyond, an elevation of one hundred and seventy-five feet! The maximum elevation of the tallest sycamore and tulip trees is probably not less than two hundred feet.

Going into these primitive woods, we find symmetrical, solid trunks of six feet and upwards in diameter, and fifty feet, or more, long to be not uncommon, in half a dozen or more species; while now and then we happen on one of those old sycamores, for which the rich alluvial bottoms of the western rivers are so famous, with a trunk thirty or even forty, possibly fifty or sixty, feet in circumference, while perhaps a hundred feet overhead stretch out its great white arms, each as large as the biggest trunks themselves of most eastern forests, and whose massive head is one of those which lifts itself so high above the surrounding tree-tops. The tall, shaft-like trunks of pecans, sweet gums or ashes, occasionally break on the sight through the dense undergrowth, or stand clear and upright in unobstructed view in the rich wet woods, and rise straight as an arrow for eighty or ninety, perhaps over a hundred, feet before the first branches are thrown out.

The following summaries of measurements, made in the summer and fall of 1871, in the vicinity of Mt. Carmel, Illinois, and mostly within a radius of ten miles, will serve to show pretty well the usual size of the large timber in that neighborhood. The measurements in the first column do not by any means represent the real maximum height of these species of trees in the Wabash Valley, since it was not often that trees of the largest size were found prostrate so that the total height and length of the trunk