230 Prairies of Ohio. 
where vessels that would be safe must be drawn high and dry upon 
the beach. : 
My letter is already longer than I intended, and I will only add, that 
as I came down the banks of the Rhine, I passed at Eltenberg a very 
high ridge of sand, extending it appeared to me, across the valley 
of that river. After entering Holland I crossed, also, just south of 
Arnheim, another such a sandy ridge running from east to west, but 
much wider than the former, being about fifteen miles across. Then 
we come again to low flat land, and lastly to the sandy strip or dyke 
at the coast. Query.—May not the shore of the North Sea have 
been in remote times at Eltenburg, and then again near Arnheim, 
and those two belts thus also once have been ocean dykes? 
Yours, respectfully, Gero. Jones. 
Prairies of Ohio.* 
Although prairies have been almost universally admired, yet little 
has been said in relation to their special formation, or the geology by 
which they are distinguished from other lands. This is specially the 
case with the wet prairies, in the Northern sections of Ohio. It is 
true their origin has given rise to various conjectures among geolo- 
gists, but their structure has never been studied, with sufficient care, 
to enable them to arrive at correct conclusions. ‘Their botany and 
zoology have met with more attention than their geology, but, even 
here, much sti!l remains to be done. 
The natural history of dry prairies has been less neglected than that 
of the wet. ‘The magnificence of their scenery has invariably been 
the theme of the traveller, and the extent of their boundaries, and— 
varieties of production, both animal and vegetable, have contributed 
largely to the embellishment of the pages of descriptive writers. 
The poet and the painter have also resorted to them, in search of 
objects to engage either the pen or the pencil. ‘The wide unbroken 
plain, covered by a rich carpet of green, gold and purple; the tall 
grass waving in the summer breeze; the immense variety of flowers 
mingling their odors with the winds; the occasional clump of trees 
rising above the other vegetable growth; the distant herd of buffalo, 
cropping the grass or flying from the hunter, and the sun sinking 
amidst grass and flowers, must furnish a scene which can be but faint- 
* From the Western Monthly Magazine, of February, 1836. 
