STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 395 



erosive power so manifest among the Alleghanies of Pennsylvania 

 and in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Arizona ; hence this 

 part of the state is characterized by ranges of low hills separated 

 by shallow valleys. 



This general fact becomes noticeable : Minnesota, as a whole, is 

 a level state, the surface being made up of a southern portion of 

 vast prairie tracts varied with wood, lake, slough and low elevation; 

 then a central belt reaching from east to west, with timber prevail- 

 ing in the eastern part, and furnishing, further west, much land 

 of exceeding fertility but interspersed with low, swampy and often 

 sandy and barren tracts; further a heavily rolling prairie stretches 

 away through the western half of the state, furnishing a setting 

 for thousands of the little lake gems which keep the air of Min- 

 nesota sweet and make the scenery far sought by summer tourists; 

 and, finally, a northern belt, as yet unsurveyed in part, and but little 

 known, extends from Lake Superior across the Mesabi and west- 

 ward to the Red River of the North. This latter tract includes 

 Sawteeth range and skirts the north shore, where some of the peaks 

 reach an altitude of 1,800 or 2,000 feet above the sea level. Hence for 

 surface features, as we pass from the river bottoms and old lake basins 

 of the Mississippi and Red rivers and the southern portions of the 

 state, to the higher level prairie of Mower and Martin counties, the 

 hilly regions of Otter Tail and Becker counties, or finally to the 

 only part which can claim the dignity of a place among the moun- 

 tainous districts of the country, we may well conclude that Mmne- 

 sota famishes a richly diversified scenery. 



Of lakes we have both ancient and existing, of the latter at 

 least 8,000; Andreas gives in his latest atlas 3759 in the surveyed 

 portions of the state, and Terry* estimates 10,000 from what he 

 knows of the unsurveyed portions. These lakes average rather 

 small with the aggregate area alieady given — 5,638 square miles. 

 Indeed, they range in size from a pool merely large enough to 

 throw a chain carrier from his course to the dimensions of 340,000 

 acres in Red Lake, 130,000 in Mille Lacs and 114,000 in Leech 

 Lake. 



These lakes may be classified under three distinct types : firsts 

 enlargements of river channels, of which class lakes Pepin and St. 

 Croix furnish illustration; formed where, through the deposition of 

 river silt by the inflowing of other streams, the channel has been 

 dammed up and the waters made to set back and form a large 



*See a highly interesting chapter on the Hydrology of Minnesota, by the late Rev. C. 

 M. Terry, in the Ninth Annual Report, Geological and Natural History Survey of Minne- 

 sota, p. 314. 



