170 XATUEAL HISTOKY BULLETIN 



But the horrors and the charms of winter finally passed, and 

 with opening spring the ponds and lakes were soon gilded with 

 the water crowfoot, and the hills and higher prairies were dot- 

 ted with the early pasqne-flower, the prairie violet and a variety 

 of rapidly succeeding spring flowers. The broad prairies were 

 swept by great whirl-wind clouds of golden plovers, the long- 

 billed curlew hovered between earth and space in marvelous man- 

 ner, an easy mark for every pot-hunter in the land ; the bobolink 

 and the marsh blackbird made the welkin ring with their songs ; 

 the mournful "boom" of the prairie chicken resounded every- 

 where ; and soon countless nests were occupied by wild geese, 

 ducks and prairie hens on all sides, giving promise of new gener- 

 ations in untold numbers to enliven these prairies in a fashion 

 which will never again be known to this or coming generations. 

 Soon the grasses covered the surface with a great carpet of 

 green painted with puccoons, prairie phlox and other flowers of 

 late spring. 



But the real rich beauty of the prairie was developed only 

 after mid-summer when myriads of flowers of most varied hues 

 were everywhere massed into one great painting, limited only 

 by the frame of the horizon, uniform in splendid beauty, but 

 endlessly varied in delicate detail. 



In the fall this in turn was followed by the rusty-red or brown 

 expanse of drying grasses which portended the coming of the 

 terror and the splendor of that scourge of the early prairie set- 

 tlers, the prairie fires, whose fascinating fury can be appreciated 

 only by those who in earlier years had the privilege of looking 

 upon them in hopeless helplessness. 



And again winter, with its brilliant monotony and its dreary 

 desolation followed, and the cycle was complete. 



Such were the prairies as we knew them in Iowa. But the 

 native prairie is fast disappearing before the army of home- 

 builders, whose invasion is everywhere followed by the disap- 

 pearance of the native prairie flora, and the appearance, in its 

 stead, of artificial groves, cultivated crops and introduced weeds. 



In Iowa the prairie formerly covered the greater part of the 

 surface of the state. The area has been variou.sly estimated at 

 from sixteen-seventeenths to four-fifths.- but a careful compila- 



