RAINFALL ON THE PLAINS. 537 



the Nebraska and Kansas Boards of Agriculture will show that, 

 in the territory lying west of the ninety-eighth meridian in those 

 States, the acreage of land actually under cultivation, when com- 

 pared with the whole area of that territory, is almost insignifi- 

 cant. The climate, as well as the law, pays no heed to small 

 things. 



It would not answer for the advocates of the theory only to 

 claim that precipitation would be augmented somewhere, and not 

 necessarily in the certain region where is found the increase of 

 farmed lands ; for it would then be very reasonable to suppose 

 that the prevailing southwest and west winds of the plains 

 would drive from them the moisture which the farmer there had 

 earned. Iowa, Missouri, and eastern Kansas, instead of the dry 

 region, would get the increased rainfall. 



Prof. Frank H. Snow, of the Kansas State University, said 

 several years ago : " But the fact that thousands of new-comers, 

 from ignorance of the climate, have attempted to introduce ordi- 

 nary agricultural operations upon the so-called plains, and have 

 disastrously failed in the attempt, has placed an undeserved 

 stigma upon the good name of Kansas in many far-distant com- 

 munities, and has undoubtedly somewhat retarded immigration 

 during the past few years. It is time for the general recognition 

 of the fact that, except in the exceedingly limited area where irri- 

 gation is possible, the western third of Kansas is beyond the limit 

 of successful agriculture." The severe seasons of drought which 

 have occurred since the above conservative statement was written 

 show the whole truth of the matter to be that the westward ad- 

 vancing line of settlement is by no means an isohyetal one, but 

 that it is merely a line representing in a way the overflow of the 

 population of our Eastern States. It needs but a slight acquaint- 

 ance among the old settlers in central Kansas to know that they 

 fear nowadays excessively dry weather as much as they did 

 twenty-five years ago. The people who live farther west are 

 losing faith in the idea of an increased rainfall, as is evidenced by 

 the fact that over two hundred linear miles of main canals have 

 lately been constructed for irrigation purposes nearly as far east 

 as Kinsley, in the Arkansas Valley of western Kansas. In the 

 Platte "Valley, in Nebraska, large irrigating systems are at present 

 being projected. 



He who would provide the plains with an ample precipita- 

 tion must remove the Rocky Mountains. Is it reasonable to sup- 

 pose that three or four telegraph lines, small bunches of stripling 

 trees here and there, and the turning over of a few thousand 

 acres of sod, can be of any avail in changing a great dry territory 

 into a garden ? Can man so easily control Nature and her laws ? 

 Certainly not. Climates are immutable so far as the puny efforts 



