go BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



We can obtain a better conception of the beneficial actions of 

 forests upon climate, by considering- the condition of a portion of 

 our country almost destitute of them. An observing traveller 

 writes to Prof. Kedzie as follows: "I am greatly interested in 

 your report on forest trees and their influence on climate, especially 

 as it explains much that I saw and experienced on the great plains 

 lying east of the Rocky Mountains. While riding over these vast 

 plains without a tree or bush, the heat by day was almost 

 unendurable, yet the cold at night was excessive, so that we 

 could not sleep unless wrapped in blankets and buffalo robes. This 

 vast region, scorched by the sun by day, and chilled by excessive 

 radiation at night, the abode of countless swarms of grasshoppers, 

 can never be the permanent home of civilized man until he can 

 protect himself and mitigate the excesses of the climate by plant- 

 ing trees." 



" It was a question with me whether it was possible to cause 

 trees to grow at all, but as I came upon the bluffs back of 

 Nebraska City, I there found the problem solved, for I there found 

 a vigorous grove formed by planting the locust and cotton-wood, 

 and then I became convinced that these vast and desolate plains 

 would some day be the happy home of millions yet to be." " I 

 returned from Fort Laramie on horseback, and went directly across 

 the country from Fort Kearney to Nebraska City. The land is 

 very rolling 'and beautiful, rich in all that a farmer wants, and yet 

 it produces nothing but the short buff"alo grass. About fifty miles 

 west of Nebraska City, the prairie chickens began to appear, and 

 with them the grass grows to a greater height. This grass indicates 

 the nearness to the Missouri river. On the Missouri bottoms 

 there is plenty of wood, principally cotton-wood. All the wood 

 I saw growing was on bottom lands, and hence my interest in the 

 nursery of thrifty locust and cotton wood on the bluffs which I 

 passed on approaching Nebraska City. It occurred to me that if 

 they would grow there on that high land, a little effort would 

 carry them back and back gradually towards the plains, and in 

 that case the desert would be redeemed in a change of climate." 



" Kansas and Nebraska both lie within the belt of country 

 which suffers most for want of rain. In 1863 it did not rain at 

 Fort Laramie for eight months, and it was dry in Kansas. It 

 cannot be considered an agricultural State on account of its frequent 

 drouths and consequent grasshopper plague — for I consider the 

 grasshoppers a result of the dry climate of the plains. There is 



