42 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



is the monsoon influence of the heat-radiating plains, which attracts the moist 

 and cooler breezes from the ocean. These come to us as south or southeast 

 winds. All of these southerly winds carry more or less moisture. 



The same influence that brings to the Mississippi Valley States, parallel 

 with Kansas, their supply of moisture, brings it to Kansas. 



Our rainfall is less, simply because we offer less favorable conditions for 

 precipitation. Supply these conditions, and our rainfall is measurably com- 

 parable with those States. Where the rainfall of Kansas is deficient, it is 

 more a lack of the necessary conditions of soil, vegetation and local evapora- 

 tion than a lack of humidity in the aerial currents passing over. The latter 

 are rarely wanting in moisture, during the summer months. The conditions 

 necessary to wring this moisture from the atmosphere are conspicuously ab- 

 s^t over a large area of Kansas, and these are: deeply-plowed and well- 

 cultivated fields, growing crops, larger area of trees, ponds of water, and 

 ranker vegetation of all kinds more generally distributed. With these sup- 

 plied, the question of the sufficiency of our rainfall will not be such a vexa- 

 tious one as it is at present. 



A comparison of the climate of the eastern half of Kansas, before and 

 since it has been brought under man's civilizing influence, afl^ords strong proof 

 of the climatal changes brought about by settlement. 



What Kansas is to-day west of the ninety-ninth meridian of longitude, all 

 of Kansas lying west of Topeka was twenty-five years ago. Then the buflfalo 

 grass covered all the prairies, except along the streams, as far east as Topeka. 

 Vegetation was scant, as the freighters across the plains in those days can 

 testify. Immense herds of buffalo kept the surface tramped hard, and to- 

 gether with the sun-baking process that it underwent, rendered the soil 

 impervious to rain, which it shed like a shingled roof. Prairie fires aided 

 this petrifying process by burning off the sparse vegetation almost annually. 

 Hot winds were a consequence of this exposed heat-radiating surface. The 

 principal rain supply of the summer months was through the medium of 

 thunder storms, of great severity. Precipitation took place at a high eleva- 

 tion, and was very rapid. Gentle showers and general rains, such as we are 

 now frequently favored with, were then very rare. During the first ten 

 years farming was attended with many difficulties and discouragements, on 

 account of the seasons, and few believed that the frontier of settlement could 

 ever be extended west of Topeka, except, perhaps, a short distance along the 

 valleys. But in spite of these many discouragements of the climate, the 

 pioneer settlers ventured first just outside the Missouri valley, then gradually 

 westward, step by step, mile by mile, and each year saw a little further ad- 

 vance made upon the Great American Desert, until now we find the land 

 possessed for 300 miles west of the Missouri river. And what has been the 

 consequence of this possession? The plow has been actively at work, and 

 the water-shedding roof on over 8,000,000 acres of land has been torn up; 

 the soil has been tilled, and a storehouse provided for the rainfall that was 



