392 ANNUAL REPORT 



plant no trees and cleanse no "augean stables," is to invite epidemics, 

 then slay our herds and our children. Would there were trumpets of 

 tension loud enough to thunder into some men's ears like an earth- 

 quake, and wake them up to a proper sense even of their own weal 

 and happiness, 



PRAIRIE PICTURES. 



Go west, not farther than the Dakota border, and observe the piti- 

 ful dearth of forests on the prairie farms. Scarcely a field, or a 

 pasture, or a barn, or a house is properly environed with trees. In- 

 deed, on some farms not a single tree, or vine, or fruit plant, or culti- 

 vated flower can be found. The owner proposes to get rich raising 

 wheat while head over heels in debt, and that continually. There is 

 such a destitution of trees to demark the highways it is most perilous 

 to venture out on a journey over the prairie in winter lest of a sudden 

 a blinding blizzard stab with white daggers. The prairie emptiness 

 when frozen up and down; the prairie dreariness amid wolfish howls 

 of wind, iced in every breath, does make the settler long for the 

 forested East or South whence he came. 



We of the farther west are living in the great continental wind- 

 trough that stretches from the plains of Texas to the Saskatchewan, 

 from Eastern Kansas and Nebraska and Western Iowa along the 

 western trails of the Big Woods in Minnesota to the foothills of the 

 Rockies — a trough practically two thousand miles long and five hun- 

 dred miles wide — territory enough for fifty millions more of people. 

 Truf, there are belts of forests along the windings of the rivers, and 

 under the enforcement of the timber culture act and the praiseworthy 

 efi'orts of intelligent homesteaders, here and there is a forest; but in 

 the main this vast extent is the sport and prey of remorseless winds 

 that sweep unchecked from the frozen pole or from the tropic furnace, 

 blasting iu winter, blighting in summer; all men and beasts are strung 

 on wire nerves through and through and all over And don't 

 we have to fight our way against oceans of weeds and devouring 

 insects? against snow-blizzards that stuff" a fellow full of borean 

 wrath? against dust-blizzards that fill eyes, ears, nose, mouth and the 

 entire epidermis with dirt and dinge, slimed on in the sweat of labor, 

 till we look like so many resurrected mummies haunting the prairies 

 in familiar companionship with the impudent gopher and jackrabbit? 



FERTILITY AND FATALITY. 



Our state geologists tell us the force of the winds are two times 



