146 In Touch with Nature. 



vegetation should exist at all is marvellous. Yet 

 there are bushes that thickly cover the ground, 

 but, if we except the few sickly cotton-woods that 

 have been planted near the dwellings, there are no 

 trees ; their place is taken by countless windmills. 

 These are no addition to the landscape, and are 

 made the more hideous from being painted white, 

 and too often spotted and splashed with red and 

 blue. A green windmill would be far less con- 

 spicuous, but this color appears to find little favor 

 with the dwellers on this plain. One needs but to 

 tarry here for a few days to learn to love trees, 

 and, indeed, well-nigh every feature of the Atlantic 

 seaboard States. 



Without this beggarly show of vegetation there 

 would be no animal life here worth mentioning ; 

 but as it is, the plain is far from being deserted. 

 My attention, on leaving the cars, was first called 

 to a few swallows twittering about the railway 

 station ; then a dull-gray kingbird perched upon 

 the telegraph-wires, and launched out into the 

 glaring sunshine for huge green beetles, that 

 seemed to replace the house-flies at home. Then, 

 too, there were ravens that flapped lazily over the 



