30 HISTORY OF OHIO. 



distant, when some future Linnseus will appear in them. If 

 the field is vast, and the laborers are few, the harvest of fame 

 will be the richer. 



Among the flowering plants, growing in them, the helianthus 

 offers, perhaps, the greatest number of varieties. 



From a careful examination of our prairies, wet and dry, 

 we are satisfied that the dry ones are the most ancient, of 

 the two — that fires produce neither of them — that in their na- 

 tural state, a luxuriant vegetation is raising their present sur- 

 face, every year; that the dry ones are extremely valuable 

 for cultivation, and that the wet ones will, at no very distant 

 day, furnish us with an abundance of fuel, in a country but 

 thinly timbered, indeed almost destitute of wood, and without 

 fossil coal, so common in our hilly region. If, as it is known 

 to be the fact, our hilly region be well supplied with ironstone, 

 and other useful minerals, together with salt water, nature has 

 supplied the same region with inexhaustible mines of coal 

 for their manufacture. If the level parts of this State, 

 where the dry prairies abound, contain large tracts of rich 

 land, the time is at hand, when they will be covered with well 

 cultivated farms, where the rich harvests will wave, and where 

 naturalized grasses will afford food for large flocks of domestic 

 animals. 



These remarks on our Prairies, were written, originally, 

 more than twenty years since, and apply especially to that pe- 

 riod of time. The reader will see, how our then predictions, 

 have since been verified, within the intermediate space of 

 time. They are now, well cultivated fields, cloathed with 

 tame grasses, and grains. Our herds of domesticated animals 

 feed and fatten, where, so recently only wild animals, and 

 still wilder men, roamed over the surface of these diluvial 

 plains. In the conclusion of this article we may say, that 

 this state contains the most and the best peat, of any state in 

 the Union. 



