54 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
sixty feet in length and two and a half feet in diameter, half a mile high, and 
then fling it out of the tornado to come crashing to the earth? Why did the tree 
ascend in a sfzral path? And in the Camanche tornado of 1860, why did a man, 
and two horses in a reversed position, sail around on the opposite sides of a cir- 
cle? Can electricity under its known laws produce such results? Possibly some 
one may yet discover a spiral kind of electricity, and show that zigzag lightning 
is only the transverse section of spiral electricity blazoned on the sky.. 
Forests present the most efficient safeguards against tornadoes. As long as 
cyclones can sweep unobstructed over our prairies we shall see the sudden 
destruction of villages and cities and the terrible loss of life and property. But 
forest countries present such obstacles to the translation of tornadoes on the sur- 
face that when one touches the earth it is soon driven into the upper air where it 
passes off comparatively harmless. Tornadoes are one of Nature’s voices telling 
us in unmistakable tones to plant forests. Indeed abundant forests would free us 
from destructive winds, drouth and locusts, our three most serious physical evils. 
With abundant forests, inhabited by an enlightened people observing the moral 
law, our prairie world would become almost a paradise. 
SCISNMEIEe MisCHZ hl Anne 
A NATURALIST’S RAMBLES ABOUT KANSAS CITY. 
NO. I. 
WM. H. R. LYKINS. 
For the lover of Nature in all her forms there are few better localities for a 
ramble than the hills around our city. The botanist, the entomologist and the 
geologist can here find much to interest them, and add many good and not a few 
rare specimens to their several collections. And for the fortunate possessor of a 
good microscope there is a never-ending fund of instruction and amusement in the 
thousand forms of fresh water infusoria inhabiting the many mossy springs oozing 
out on the hillsides. The Diatomaciz are especially abundant, encrusting the 
rocks with their peculiar brown hue in places where the water streams over the 
cliffs. As we stand upon the top of the bluff fronting westward and look down 
at our feet we find the rocks strewn with fossil shells; and we can easily imagine 
the time when this was a wave washed shore and the vast expanse spread out 
before us was a region of shallow seas dotted with reefs and islets; once the 
homes of myriads of Mollusca, from the tiny Cyéhere, no bigger than a pin’s 
head, to the great coiled and chambered shell of the Vautilus, thirty inches in 
diameter, whose fossilized remains go to make up these rocks. In these waters 
also roamed a great shark, the Petalodus destructor, doubtless the terror of these 
