18 IOWA ACADEMY OP SCIENCES. 



woodland have been stripped completely from their sides? As 

 civilized men we have overthrown in all ways in flora, in fauna, 

 in surface-conditions an equilibrium which nature after number- 

 less oscillations had established and it remains for us as a people 

 to reach quicl^ly 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 acumen of those who wait for such 

 instruction. Besides, as just said, 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 sux)erfluous vegetal wealth for- 

 bids labor and denies the possibility of want; on the other 

 hand, our prairies, although of matchless fertility, lie just on 

 the limit of the region of inadequate rainfall. We have had, 

 hitherto, just enough humidity and no more. Minnesota 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 is probably also constant, taken one year with 

 another over long periods of time. This we may admit as true 

 with the probable exception that our "data, if sufficiently 

 extended backward, might show a gradual, though very slight, 

 decrease for all the western Mississippi valley. The average 

 rainfall of the past eight years has been for Iowa as follows: 



INCHES. 



1890 31.12 



1891 3.3.13 



1892 35.74 



1893 27.31 



1894 21 . 95 



1895 26.63 



1896 37.45 



1897 (11 months) 24.98 



We pass through seasons dry and wet; as Mr. Sage expresses 

 it we have our "ups and downs"; but is it not plain that it is 

 nof so much the volume of rainfall in this part of the world as 

 the amount of it, that in our processes of agriculture and else- 



