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Show BY PATH AND TKAIL. 165 The desert laboratory for the study of the flora of barren lands, is the property of the Carnegie Institute at Washington, and was founded by Mr. F. V. Coville, of the United States Department of Agriculture, a^ d Dr. D. Trembly MacDougal, who was for years assist ant director of the New York Botanical Garden. Dr. MacDougal is now here in charge of the department of botanical research. In its specialty of purpose there is only one other institution in existence, even collaterally related to this desert laboratory, and that is the college of science established lately in Greenland by the govern ment of Denmark, for researches in arctic regions and the study of the flora and fauna of the far north. This, desert laboratory, under expert botanists, will include in its scope, the physiographic conditions of notable inter est in the two great desert areas of western America,, deliminated by the geologist, the botanist, and the geog rapher, and designated as the Sonora Nevada desert and the Sinaloa Chihuahua region of sand. These two regions embrace large sections of Idaho, Utah, Oregon, Colorado, Washington, Nevada, CaJifornia, Arizona, Baja California, Sonora and Sinaloa. In this classifica tion the beds of many ancient lakes are included, and with them the yet existing Great Salt Lake. Dr. Mac Dougal informs me that notable features in this vast body are the Snake river desert of Idaho, the Ealston sand lands of Nevada, the sage fields of Washington, the lava beds of Oregon, Death Valley, the Mojave Desert, the Colorado Desert, the Painted Desert in Arizona and New Mexico, the Salton bed and the great Sonora desert of Mexico. In the Californias Southern and Lower the desert vegetation and that of the coast lands meet,, but, except in rare instances, never assimilate. I was |