3890 AMERICAN FOREST PLANTATIONS. 
sylviculture would be impracticable in those regions from the 
want of rain. But we are acquainted with no soil and climate 
which favor the production of herbage and forbid the rearing 
of frees, and, as Bryant well observes, “it seems certain that 
where grass will grow trees may be made to grow also.” * In 
* The origin of our Western treeless prairies and plains, as of the Russian 
steppes, which much resemble them, is obscure, but the want of forests upon 
them, seems to be due to climatic conditions and especially to a want of spring 
and summer rains, which prevents the spontaneous formation of forests upon 
them, though not necessarily the growth of trees artificially planted and cared 
for. Climatic conditions more or less resembling those of our Western territo- 
ries produce analogous effects in India. Much valuable information on the 
relations between climate and forest vegetation will be found in an article 
by Dr. BRANDIS, On the Distribution of Forests in India, in Ocean Highways 
for October, 1872. 
In the more eastwardly prairie region fires have done much to prevent the 
spread of the native groves, and throughout the whole woodless plains the 
pasturage of the buffalo alone would suffice to prevent a forest growth. The 
prairies were the proper feeding-grounds of the bison, and the vast number of 
those animals is connected, as cause or consequence, with the existence of these 
vast pastures, The bison, indeed, could not convert the forest into a pasture, 
but he would do much to prevent the pasture from becoming a forest. 
There is positive evidence that some of the American tribes possessed large 
herds of domesticated bisons. See HuuboLptT, Ansichten der Natur, i., pp. 
71-75. What authorizes us to affirm that this was simply the wild bison re- 
claimed, and why may we not, with equal probability, believe that the migra- 
tory prairie-buffalo is the progeny of the domestic animal run wild ? 
There are, both on the prairies, as in Wisconsin, and in deep forests, as in 
Ohio, extensive remains of a primitive people, who must have been more 
numerous and more advanced in art than the present Indian tribes. There 
can be no doubt that the woods where such earthworks are found in Ohio 
were cleared by them, and that the vicinity of these fortresses or temples was 
inhabited by a large population. Nothing forbids the supposition that the 
prairies were cleared by the same or a similar people, and that the growth of 
trees upon them has been prevented by fires and grazing, while the restoration 
of the woods in Ohio may be due to the abandonment of that region by its 
original inhabitants. The climatic conditions unfavorable to the spontaneous 
growth of trees on the prairies may possibly be an effect of too extensive 
clearings, rather than a cause of the want of woods. 
It is disputed whether the steppes of Russia were ever wooded. They 
were certainly bare of forest growth at a very remote period ; for Herodotus 
describes the country of the Scythians between the Ister and the Tanais as 
