STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCrETT. 393 



greater on the open west than on the east side of our Big Woods; and 

 that cold air in motion extracts heat proportional to its velocity, and 

 with the heat goes moisture. According to this, if the ratio holds, 

 during cold winds, heat and moisture pass off twice more rapidly on 

 the open prairies west of the Big Woods than on the east. Would it 

 not be a defensible scheme to extend the local advantage of the east 

 side over all the western domain by forestry? 



Everyone who has lived on the treeless prairie knows that snow, so 

 essential to the protection of our plants and preparation of the soil for 

 next j^ear's crops, cannot long remain there on a level as on woodlands. 

 It ma3' be moist when it falls, but when a cold wind rolls its gereal 

 wheels over, it soon laps up the moisture, and in a few hours culti- 

 vated fields are- barren again as if swept by a thousand new brooms. 

 With great struggle the fibrils send up their moisture to supply the 

 depleted parts, but this, too, takes wing, and the plants are ruined by 

 **winter seasoning. " When the mercury is twenty or thirty degrees 

 below zero, the air chilled to a dead lock, if properly clothed, you can 

 endure the temperature quite comfortably, far more so than when the 

 mercury is ten degrees above, and the wind plays a mad-cap race on 

 the prairie. If you want to cool off a fretful sweat, stand at the 

 northwest corner of your house just fifteen minutes, while old Boreas 

 blows his horn. The experiment will give you some idea of the peril 

 our stock and plants are in when thus exposed. In the summer sea- 

 son, on the open prairie, during the more chilly hours, you can 

 actually see the moisture of the cultivated grounds drifting away on 

 the air waves. At the right angle of observation there looms np to 

 view humid strata, trembling, undulating in the wind, rushing on and 

 on like the sea when vexed with storm. But the charm of it all soon 

 fades into disappointment, when you reflect that the wind is thus sav- 

 agely bleeding our early crops. Some of our most destructive winds 

 in summer are from the south, almost burning up the very breath, and 

 everything wilts as if touched with fiery flames. Hence, the necessity 

 of forest belts at that point of compass, and elsewhere in the lines of 

 prevailing winds. 



WOFUL WASTE 



From ten to fifteen per cent of our crops are annually destroyed by 

 winds. The blossoms of wheat, corn, oats, potatoes, beans, apple and 

 small fruit plants are thereby largely robbed of their fertilizing pro- 

 perties, and the harvest is therefore thin and scattering. Sometimes 

 the ground covering to the cereals is swept off and piled up in dirt- 

 ridges, as was the case last spring on thousands of acres. 



