60 Kansas Academy of Science. 



show that the open prairie does not still have the same amount 

 of wind it always had. 



Another common delusion about Kansas weather is that 

 the winters are becoming milder and the droughts less frequent 

 and severe. This delusion I should like, personally, to find not 

 a delusion, but it will have to give way to cold and unfeeling 

 statistics. It is a common tendency with all of us to remember 

 the cold winter years ago, when the snow lay deep on the 

 ground from Christmas until spring, and the ground was 

 frozen several feet deep, and the drought that withered the 

 corn, forgetting the numerous favorable seasons that have 

 passed. This has been especially true in Kansas, where the 

 early settlers were poorly protected from the inclemencies of 

 the weather, and still more poorly prepared in a financial way 

 to undergo a crop failure resulting from a severe drought. 



The winter of 1911-'12, only five years ago, was the coldest 

 on the state's record, and the drought of 1913, less than 4 years 

 ago, the most severe in the history of the state, with the 

 possible exception of that of 1874, though doubtless many old 

 settlers can recall winters when there was more suffering 

 from the cold than in the one mentioned, and a great many 

 years, especially 1860 and 1864, when the shortage of crops 

 due to dry weather was more disastrous than in 1913. 



In the light of all available knowledge, therefore, the fact 

 seems to stand that, while Kansas has made great strides in an 

 agricultural way in the past fifty years, and may make even 

 greater strides in the next fifty years, the climate has not 

 changed any since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock and 

 will probably not change for centuries to come ; also, that the 

 golden harvests of the last twenty years have been the result 

 of increased skill and industry in making the earth productive, 

 and have been independent of any change in climate. 



U. S. Weather Bureau, Topeka. 



