196 PUBLIC PARKS OP IOWA 



my opinion no question as to the facts in the problem. Everyone familiar 

 with the case will, I believe, assent that the state as a whole, is much 

 drier than it was 40 or 50 years ago. It was at one time in all eastern 

 Iowa, the common practice for each man to dig a well, for house or field, 

 almost where he chose. A few feet below the surface, water was abun- 

 dant. There is no such water supply now. Sloughs abounded from whose 

 miry ooze the water seeped all summer long, and running water was 

 found on every farm. There is no running water now; not because 

 of dry seasons, but because of drainage. The insidious tiles exhaust 

 the bed of the slough, and highway ditches on every square mile pre- 

 vent all accumulation of surface water. Local rainfall is immediately 

 carried away and has no time to soak down and fill subjacent porous 

 layers. The soil has become dry, and for water supply the citizen must 

 rely upon beds far down below, beneath one or more sheets of drift. This 

 is one side of the question. Resultant from it, in part, appears another 

 phenomenon, viz.: the failure of our streams. The creeks unfed, dried 

 many of them long ago, except as flushed, sewer-wise, by the rush of sur- 

 face storm-water, and the rivers are manifestly diminishing year by 

 year. The sands and clays from ploughed hills-ides are choking their 

 channels, sealing their slender fountains. The stripping of woods and 

 forest from river and hillside, from the rocky banks has all tended in 

 the same direction. The water courses unshaded dry up in the sum- 

 mer sun. It is a fact often observed that trees by the highway keep the 

 road muddy long after rain. To the same effect operate groves and 

 thickets along our streams. The Platte river goes dry in summer; and 

 yet the Platte river is fed by eternal snows. Shall the Des Moines, the 

 Cedar and the Iowa, dependent on rainfall fare better than the Platte 

 when their channels are filled with sand and all protection of forest 

 and woodland have been stripped completely from their sides? As civ- 

 ilized men we have overthrown in all ways in flora, in fauna, in surface 

 conditions 'an equilibrium which nature after numberless oscilliations had 

 established and it remains for us as a people to reach quickly a similar 

 pacific state under new conditions with different species, different forms. 



But it is said time will solve these problems; implying, of course, 

 that time will solve them happily and right. But time, like experience, 

 keeps a dear school, and the proverb does not commend the mental acu- 

 men of those who wait for such instruction. Besides, as just sadd, time 

 has already solved the problem, and in that solution there is absolutely 

 naught of hope. 



Iowa is not a tropical island, bathed by ocean dews and washed by 

 diurnal rains,, where superfluous vegetable wealth forbids labor and de- 

 nies the possibility of want; on the other hand, our prairies, although of 

 matchless fertility, lie just on the limit of the region of inadequate rain- 

 fall. We have had, hitherto, just enough humidity and no more. Minne- 

 sota and Wisconsin are nearer the lakes, and Missouri, nearer the gulf; 

 west of us are the semi-arid regions, once ominously called the American 

 desert, whose hot breath even, now occasionally invades our western and 

 central counties. 



I am aware that the competent director of our Iowa weather service 

 takes the view that the climate of Iowa is a constant; that the rainfall 



