210 ANNUAL REPORT. 



the unequal rain and snowfall, the cloudbursts and deluges that we 

 hear so much about on the one hand, and the no less destructive, 

 but less terrible drouths on the other hand, are due to this clearing 

 of woodlands, destruction of grasses, and draining of marshes; in- 

 creasing aridity of air being followed by lower temperatures, and this 

 by sudden and enormous condensations of masses of moisture brought 

 in by ocean currents, producing deluges of precipitation. These 

 prophets of Nature have predicted for many years past (and appealed 

 in vain to the government to prevent) such floods as that of last 

 year and the year before on the Missouri and the Ohio, and worse 

 to come. Already many of our small valleys in Minnesota and 

 Wisconsin along the Mississippi river, which in the days of early 

 settlement were the most sought after of all our lands, are now held 

 by their owners with constant dread and peril of their lives or prop- 

 erty; some homes once thought secure, already abandoned; while far- 

 mers who live above them on the slopes that feed these valleys are 

 complacently allowed to go on clearing and smoothing the slopes 

 and completing the ruin of their neighbors below, and hastening the 

 time when they must leave their own lands for want of water, whose 

 sources they have destroyed. Already it is said that the timber ot 

 the eastern slopes of the Rocky mountains has been nearly destroyed 

 by the necessities of mining industries and the fires that are 

 allowed to follow the axe of the woodman; and the terror of in- 

 ceasing floods grows upon the people living in the Missouri and 

 the Mississippi valleys in consequence, while year by year vast dis- 

 tricts in these valleys are to become uninhabitable tnat nature de- 

 signed for the richest and most productive abiding places of man. 

 It does seem as if our people might soon begin to realize these 

 things and demand of the general government an arrest of this 

 mad work. 



A vote of thanks was tendered to Professor Hall for his able ad- 

 dress, aad he was requested to prepare a paper for our next annual 

 meeting on the subject of climatic influences of forests. 



Prof. Porter called attention to the meeting of the State Amber 

 Cane Association, to be held next week at the State University, 

 especially to the expected lectures of Prof. Wiley, of the U. S. De- 

 partment of Agriculture, upon new and improved methods in the 

 manufacture of sorghum syrups and sugars, to be delivered before 

 the Association. A cordial invitation was extended to all to 

 attend the meetings. 



