INFLUENCE OF FORESTS ON CLIMATE. g]^ 



not enough rain to drown the rascals." " But all this, it seeped 

 to me, might be changed by tree cultivation. Now for my reasons. 

 The belt of timber on the Missouri bottoms affected the grass for 

 fifty miles in the interior, the climate was so changed by the 

 timber belt that the high rolling lands grew grass sufficiently high 

 to hide the prairie chickens. Of course the volume of the river 

 did something towards this ; but the trees served to hold the 

 vapors which arose, and, it may be, helped to diffuse them. The 

 circumstance, then, that trees would grow on the high lands was 

 a fact, it seemed to me, which solved the question of the future of 

 Kansas and Nebraska." ■ 



Michigan, in advance of any other State, has given attention to 

 the subject of trees. She appears to have patriotic citizens who 

 are devoted to her future as well as her present welfare. Having 

 been a citizen of that peninsula when she took her position as a 

 State in the Union, it is natural that the writer* should watch with 

 interest her growth and her history. At the period of her change 

 from a territorial government, her wealth of forest was enormous. 

 Could wise and prudent men from that day have managed her 

 domain, the value of present product from her farms would be 

 much more than it is — probably doubled. So recently has winter- 

 wheat been their successful leading crop, that, without sufficiently 

 noting the rapid change going on in the climate, farmers have 

 persisted in sowing their broad fields, till the State has lost in the 

 winter-kill of the crop, twenty million dollars in four years. 

 Instead of being what it should have been, — the orchard and fruit 

 garden of America, — it is fast losing its ability to grow a home 

 supply. But, under wise counsels, the people have there set about 

 repairing the damage done ; and the initial legislation of the State 

 la a perpetual reminder to the citizen, that he owes other duties to 

 his State and country besides the payment of his annual assessed 

 taxes. 



Maine as a State, has yet a vast amount of forest, and may 

 continue to have for centuries to come, but their preservation will 

 be through the obstacles that nature has thrown around them, 

 guarding them from approach, rather than by the forbearance of 

 the present wood-cutting Yankee. The location of the great mass 

 of our forests is such as to exert but little climatic influence over 

 the agricultural districts. To learn of the effiscts of trees on 



*C. C. 



