STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 395 



in a treeless country. Environment develop corresponding attributes 

 in everything else; why not in stock? Some of us settlers, known 

 in the East for our Christianly mild disposition, have, strangely to re- 

 late become ill-tempered, living on the treeless prairie. Like man, 

 like horse or dog, youi answer. 



Our business, too, will materially suffer, and that very soon, unless 

 we early and promptly attend to forestry. We are fast depleting the 

 valuable timber. Where shall we get our supply in the future for fuel 

 and manufacturing? What are we doing to compensate for the loss? 

 Doing? Why, cutting and slashing where there is anything of the 

 kind left, with a vandalism more implacably avaricious than ever 

 characterized the feudal ages By mathematical measurement it is 

 found that our Minnesota river drainage has an area of 19,000 square 

 miles, nearly destitute of forests; the upper Mississippi drainage is 

 about 23,000 square miles, mostly forested; thus the Mississippi has 

 about a quarter more drainage than the Minnesota, and yet at the 

 confluence of these rivers near iSt Paul the Mississippi gives us seven 

 times more water than its competitor. There can be no other cause 

 for this disparity than the water ratio between a treeless and a forested 

 country. 



The Minnesota is largely fed by springs from the Coteaux in Dakota 

 near the western boundary of our State, a mountainous rampart 

 stretching nearly north and south about seventy-five miles. These 

 springs flow down numerous ravines wherein long, zigzag forests, 

 have been growing for centuries. In keeping with the marauding 

 instincts of the whites the Sisseton Indians are using up the great 

 trees for wood to sell in our markets. Are they blamable? You 

 would not think so were you to inspect their condition. Something 

 should be speedily done by Congress to preserve these forests, and 

 thereby preserve intact the headwaters of the Minnesota, whose valley 

 cannot be excelled for richness and for business that leans depen- 

 dently upon the river for refreshment to crops and force to manu- 

 factures. 



The same depredation, on a larger scale, is going on around the 

 sources of the Mississippi — fast slaying and burning the forests. If 

 not soon arrested, the whole climate of the State and contiguous states 

 will be colder and drier, irreparably damaging agriculture and all its 

 correlative branches of industry. Not only such calamities will fol- 

 low, but the whole country along the river channels will be subject 

 more than ever to great floods, spreading ruin in their march to the 

 south. 



