

The second-largest province on the continent, this province is 

 over 2300 miles in length from the northwest, starting about the 

 middle Peace River region in northern Alberta and extending 

 to the east Gulf coast of Texas. It is on an average some 

 500 miles wide. It forms the core of North America and is 

 commonly known as the Prairie Belt — which indeed it is, both 

 technically and popularly. As a whole, it is an immense plateau 

 that descends northward toward the shores of the Arctic Ocean, 

 tilting gently in that direction from an elevation of some 

 three thousand feet in the south. To the southeast it pitches over 

 an abrupt bow-shaped escarpment which runs from the eastern 



edge of the Sacramento—Guadalupe Mountains, east and then 

 northeast to the southern fringe of the Ouachita Mountains of 

 the Interior Highlands. Beyond this escarpment it covers the 

 coastal plain of east Texas to the Gulf: then, as a vegetational 

 belt, it crosses the Gulf, frittges the Mississippi delta, and finally 

 appears on the central third of the peninsula of Florida. 



The western edge of the prairies lies against the eastern face 

 of the Rockies all the way from the Pecos River valley in the 

 south to about Fort Nelson on the Yukon border in the north. 

 On the north and northeast it marches with the boreal 

 woodlands, from which it is separated by narrow belts of 

 Parkland, North Temperate Broad-leafed Woodland, and the 

 Transition Belt of hard and soft woods. There are long stretches 

 where this change is abrupt and all these belts are compressed 

 into a band only a few miles wide. At other places, the grasses 

 meander into the forest in tongues or the forest breaks up into 

 typical parklands with isolated trees. At still others, dense 

 shrubbery intervenes, giving way to deciduous forests to the 

 north. There are also isolated outliers of prairie deep in the 

 boreal forest between Athabasca and Great Slave Lake. On the 

 east, prairies once made a great sweep over the upper Mississippi 

 into the Heartland area, hut this pocket has been considerably 

 vegetated by agriculture. To the southeast, their border bows to 

 the west around the Interior Highlands. 



This vast plateau varies from sandy plains and loess to 

 steppes and flat prairies. Upon it stands quite a number of 

 isolated low mountain blocks, and it is cut almost all over 

 by fern-frond-shaped drainage systems, the meandering bottoms 

 of which may be level and heavily vegetated with gallery forest 

 and lush meadows. In other places, they form completely arid 

 "badlands." There is much fertile land following the courses of 

 all the larger rivers. In the past, these supported a different 

 fauna from that of the plateau alongside, and they still do so in 

 some valleys of the southeastern region. 



history of this earth. Prior to its appearance there had of course 

 been herbivorous animals — and in large numbers — that fed on 

 all manner of other green things, but it was not till the advent 

 of grasses that vast herds of grazing herbivores could be devel- 

 oped. In fact, the rise of the mammals coincided with the rise 

 of the grasses, and the great herds of mammalian herbivores 

 that flourished in Eocene times were definitely and primarily 

 grass-eaters or grazers rather than browsers, as may be seen 

 from the pattern of their teeth. Now, without the grasslands there 

 would not have been all these kinds of animals; and without vast 

 grasslands there could not have been the enormous numbers of 

 them that we know from fossil evidence existed. And this was 

 millions of years before the advent of man. Thus there must 

 always have been grass belts from at least the end of the age of 

 the dinosaurs. Grasslands must therefore be natural climax 

 growths and must have been in existence long before man. 



The reasons for their position globally is the peculiar abil- 

 ity of grass to grow in direct sunlight and withstand hot and 

 cold aridity, combined with their inability to exist in deep shade 

 or under a closed canopy. However, grasslands altogether unaided 

 cannot hold their own against the encroachment of woody shrubs 

 and trees if climatic changes take place. In the case of our Prairie 

 Belt the chaparral of the Northern Scrub Belt would eventually 

 have swamped the grass by moving in from the south, and then 

 parkland and finally temperate woods would have done likewise 



from the north, had it not been for certain counterforces. These 

 were animals, notably the bison and the prairie dogs. 



Before the arrival of Europeans, man in the form of the 

 Amerindian did not influence the prairies except as just another 

 predator. If he did not set fire to it, nature did so by lightning. 

 The Plains Amerindians were hunters, not agriculturists, and 

 they were nomadic, following the great bison herds. They shared 

 their resources with the grizzly bears and a certain number of 

 pumas. Bison ran by the millions, and along with them were 

 large numbers of pronghorns and white-tailed deer, though the 

 latter stayed mostly in the bottoms. Moreover, mastodons and 

 mammoths were also present in considerable numbers — not 

 nearly so long ago, it now appears, as was previously thought. It 

 was these vast grazing hosts that maintained the grassfields, yet 

 it was not they that held the scrub and the trees at bay. This 

 was the work of certain lesser folk that made up for their small 

 size by their incredible numbers. This lesser fauna was and is 

 typical of and in many respects peculiar to these particular grass- 

 lands, and unfortunately it has suffered as great a defeat at the 

 hands of the invading white man as did the bigger game and the 

 native Indian population. Its virtual disappearance has had even 

 profounder effects. This fauna was originally dependent upon the 

 delightful little animals known popularly as prairie dogs. 



I should not need to mention that these are not dogs at all, 

 but there is still widespread confusion about their true identity. 



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