3G2 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



State. A person might travel from DeKalb to Chicago 

 and never know or care about the Bloomington or Valpa- 

 radio moraines, but when he has had his eyes opened to 

 such things the landscape takes on new meaning and new 

 interest. 



The Physiographic divisions of the State offer a varied 

 and interesting field for special study. The Lake Plain, 

 the Morainal Plains, the Driftless Area, the Ozark ex- 

 tension and the Gulf Embayment, with their modifica- 

 tions and extensions, offer fields for study usually but 

 little appreciated by the average student. Could such a 

 study be supplimented by systematic personal observa- 

 tion it would be much more effective, but how can such 

 things be ? 



Plant and animal life and its distribution are receiving 

 deservedly more attention in the field of Geography. The 

 person who puts down Illinois as a " prairie" state gets 

 somewhat of a jolt when he comes to study vegetation 

 conditions and finds that the region classified as "natural 

 forest" is so extensive. Seventeen counties are counted 

 as being entirely in the forest area and only three en- 

 tirely outside. And is the rest true prairie? Perhaps 

 the term "prairie" is correct, but the term "steppe," 

 which fits the region immediately east of the Rockies, can 

 hardly be applied to any of Illinois. In 1919 Illinois mills 

 sawed about 65,000,000 feet of lumber, of which 35,000,000 

 was oak, 5,000,000 elm and 4,000,000 walnut. Only six- 

 teen states cut more oak and only five more walnut. The 

 total value of Illinois timber products in 1919 was great- 

 er than in Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Maine, Georgia 

 or Minnesota, all known as lumber-producing states. Are 

 not these facts worth knowing? 



Some English Geographers, Unstead for one, have 

 criticized certain publications called geographical by 

 American authors. The grounds for this criticism lie in 

 the fact that too much of the material is purely historical. 

 History is not Geography, but that there is a geograph- 

 ical basis for much of the history of Illinois seems to me 

 to be absolutely clear. Did the Indians burn the prairie 

 grass and forest edge periodically to increase the buffalo 

 pasture? If so, we have there an illustration of a social 



