CLIMATIC CONDITIONS IN THE PRAIRIE REGION. 169 



larly to the South American pampas and llanos; but was also advocated by 

 others as the effective cause of the existence of the treeless areas in the 

 prairie regions of our own countr}'. In the latter case, however, the publica- 

 tion by the Smithsonian Institution of the statistics of rain-fall in the United 

 States, as elaborated by Mr. Schott with great care and critical acumen, 

 rendered it po.ssible to declare with the utmost confidence that there was no 

 such irregular distribution of the precipitation through the year as had been 

 taken for granted, without inquiry or investigation, by those promulgating 

 the theory in question. On the contrary, it appeared certain that the rain- 

 fall in the prairie States was not only ample in quantity but as regularly 

 distributed through the year as it was in adjacent heavily wooded regions. 

 Indeed the existence of forests, hardly surpassed in grandeur by any in the 

 world, along the slopes of the Sierra Nevada of California, where the precipi- 

 tation is as irregularly distributed as possible, would, of itself, be sufficient 

 proof that the theory advocated by Peschel must, to say the least, be looked 

 on with great suspicion.* 



Bearing in mind tlie foregoing remarks as to the vastness of the area of 

 treeless land on the earth, and the nature of the causes by which this condi- 

 tion of the surface has been brought about, the reader will be prepared to 

 examine the question whether it is possible to account for the phenomena 

 of desiccation, as described in the preceding chapter, by ascribing it to man's 

 interference with the course of nature, — a theory shown to be so widely 

 prevalent at the present time. 



It must be evident to every one that, at least as a general rule, the tree- 

 less areas of the earth are such on account of their position with reference 

 to the distribution of the rain-fall or of temperature, or else on account of 

 the peculiarities of the soil by which they are covered. In fact, it is not 

 known that any one has seriously advocated the theory that the steppes of 

 Asia, for instance, have been made what they are — as to vegetation and 

 physical character — by the ngency of man. Neither has it occurred to any 

 one to maintain that forests formerly extended quite to the edge of the sea 

 along the northern coasts of North America and Europe, and that in conse- 



* The pli3'sical-geographical and statistical maps puLlished by tlie Eussian Government, on wliicli the distri- 

 butiim of tlie forests and the character of the soil of that country are indicated by colors, show the most remark- 

 able coincidence between the position of the lines bounding the forest-covered area on the south and that of the 

 region of the so-called " tschornozeni," or black earth, on tlie north. Tliis peculiar variety of soil, as is well 

 known, is characterized not only by its color, but by its extraordinary fineness, just as is that of the prairie 

 region of Kovth America. 



