The Heartland 



The Great Lakes, Central Lowlands, 

 and Interior Highlands 



In accordance with our plan of travel we approach this province 

 from the far northwest, from the region of Fort Nelson in British 

 Columbia. Having swept to the farthest west through the sub- 

 Arctic provinces, and then dropped down, as it were, south into 

 the temperate woodlands on the west coast, we must now follow 

 this major vegetational belt back to the east. Because of the 

 extent to which the prairies push to the northwestward, the 

 parklands, temperate woodlands, and even the transition belt of 

 mixed deciduous trees and conifers are compressed into a strip 

 so narrow as almost to disappear in northern Alberta. They do, 

 however, persist in their proper sequence in a narrow belt across 

 the center of the continent from that point to Minnesota, by 

 which time they have together widened out to some 250 miles 

 in depth from north to south. 



Here, as you can see from the map, they then fan out like a 

 great funnel directed to the southeastward, spreading from the 

 middle St. Lawrence valley in the north, all along the west face 

 of the Appalachians, to the southern face of the Ozark Plateau. 

 And they funnel out in three streams — the Transition Belt across 

 the Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence; the Deciduous Woods to the 

 feet of the mountains; and the Parklands first south and then 

 west again, making a great curve round the Ozarks to flow into 

 the Southern Pinelands. 



This great triangle, taking Minnesota as its apex, is today the 

 most highly developed part of our continent from the human 

 standpoint. I do not like to introduce the works of man, espe- 

 cially of industrial man, in this survey of our continent, since 

 my primary intention is to try to depict it as it was before the 

 advent of the latter and to describe those parts of it which still 

 remain unsullied. However, the greater part of this province has 

 now been so completely altered by non-native people that it is 

 almost impossible to see what it was originally like. 



The east coastal strip between Boston and Washington, D.C., 

 is today even more heavily populated and industrialized, but 

 there this "blight" is far more concentrated and there are still 

 (as we shall see in the next chapter) numerous extensive areas, 

 often hard by the most populous districts, that are not only 

 completely wild but may in some cases be truly virgin territory. 

 In this Heartland Province, on the other hand, apart from its 

 periphery, the whole land surface has been cleared and either 

 put to use for agricultural purposes or built over with sprawling 

 cities, towns, and industrial plants. The industrial areas are 

 almost confluent and are concentrated precisely in that portion 

 of the triangle originally covered by the Deciduous Forest Belt 

 with an extension down the St. Lawrence Valley, but they avoid 



the uplands of the Interior Highlands and the Appalachian 

 Piedmont. What is not therein built over is devoted to intensive 

 agriculture. Around the northern half of Lake Michigan and 

 around Lake Huron, woodlands still hold considerable sway, 

 and along the Piedmont and on the Boston and Ouachita moun- 

 tains and the Ozark Plateau they still predominate, though 

 agriculture is everywhere steadily creeping inward to the bases 

 of the steeper slopes. In the central western area, which was 

 originally a huge parkland enclave, we now have the great corn 

 belt and widespread stock-raising. The trees that originally 

 dotted this land were cleared when it was colonized; now other 

 and often non-indigenous trees are being planted butby a different 

 formula to that employed by nature. Though still isolated for the 

 most part, they now stand around farmsteads, along roads, or 

 between fields as windbreaks. This province is rich in oil, iron, 

 and copper, and its soil is highly suitable for all manner of crops 

 and especially corn. 



It is interesting to note that the rainfall of this triangle in 

 summer (average ten to twenty inches) is lower than that of the 

 areas immediately adjacent to both the east and west, where it 

 averages twenty to thirty inches; in winter (still at ten to twenty 

 inches) it is intermediate between a welter zone on the east and 

 a drier one on the west. Moreover, the limits of this stable rainfall 

 area are almost precisely those of this province as defined on the 

 basis of vegetation. This Heartland is, in fact, in almost every 

 respect a mean of all the varieties of climates, floras, and faunas 

 of the whole continent — neither hot nor cold, dry nor wet, 

 densely forested nor barren, and astonishingly equable through- 

 out the year. It is ideally suited to European man and in many 

 respects partakes of features identical to his traditional environ- 

 ment. If we may regard the white man simply as another species 

 of fairly large mammal — an introduced species, in fact — that 

 migrated to this continent from Europe, the biologist would 

 expect the majority of its individuals to gravitate toward and 

 settle in just this triangle. The eastern seaboard is perhaps better 

 suited to — ^or should we say more easily adapted by? — people 

 from the seagirt western fringes of Europe; the damp, warm 

 southeast by Africans; California by Mediterraneans; and the 

 dry southwest by Middle Eastern folk or those from the arid 

 uplands of the Iberian Peninsula. Man is a species of mammal 

 and, despite the great changes he is now able to bring about in 

 his surroundings, he is still — as we shall constantly observe 

 before our travels are over — to a very considerable extent 

 governed in his actions and place of abode by the nature of his 

 ancestral environment. In other words, even modern man likes 

 to dispose himself and his activities in new places in accord 

 with the underlying pattern of the different types of vegetation 

 to which he has been accustomed. 



There is a very interesting example of another animal doing 

 exactly the same thing in this province. This is none other than 

 the Ring-necked Pheasant, which was introduced as a game bird 

 from Europe — to which continent it is, incidentally, alleged to 

 have originally been introduced from Asia either by the Romans 

 or in Roman times. These birds were at first hand-reared and 

 then released at the appropriate season, and this was done more 

 or less haphazardly all over the eastern states. In many areas 

 this practice has had to be continued, as the released birds die 

 out and do not breed successfully in the wild. In other areas, to 

 the contrary, they immediately adapted themselves and multi- 



The Sparrow Hawk or Kestrel (Faico sparverius), a small 

 falcon and not to be confused with the European Sparrow 

 Hawk, nests in holes in trees and is common in this province. 



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