702 • KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



forest. Every one knows that this is constantly occurring in the camps of civil- 

 ized men, who are responsible for the fact that in the regions over which they 

 have displaced the Indian for nearly a century no growth of timber has yet been 

 allowed to spring up as is its natural tendency. How much less, then, would 

 savages restrain the agency of fire in reducing the forests of the Missouri and 

 Mississippi Valleys to the treeless condition of the plains ! 



The prevailing winds throughout the entire section under consideration are 

 from the west, and it is easy to see how, in a few centuries at least, the prairies of 

 Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Illinois might have resulted from this con- 

 tinuous holocaust of their pristine forests. 



The very simplicity of scientific truths is often a bar to their acceptance, 

 but science, as Huxley has said, is only common sense methodized and extended. 

 Certain investigators seem to suppose that unless their labors succeed in bringing 

 out some unexpected result no progress has been made. No problem has been 

 more completely in the hands of this class than that of the timberless regions of 

 North America. 



This form of sensational science should be discountenanced as tending to 

 warp the candid judgment of students of nature, and to divert them from the one 

 sole aim of science, the discovery of truth. 



If, therefore, in considering the facts from which the causes of the absence of 

 arborescent vegetation upon the great plains must be deduced, I have reached a 

 somewhat plain and commonplace conclusion, my only apology must be that no 

 other conclusion has seemed to me to be warranted by those facts. 



REPORT FROM OBSERVATIONS TAKEN AT CENTRAL STATION, 

 WASHBURN COLLEGE, TOPEKA, KANSAS. 



BY PROF. J. T. LOVEV^ELL, DIRECTOR. 



Highest barometer during month 29.57, on the 2 2d. Lowest barometer 

 during month 28.45, o^ the 26th. 



Highest temperature during month 72°, on the 12th, Lowest temperature 

 during month 10°, on the 30th. 



Highest velocity of wind during month 46, on the 26th. Total travel, 12,473 

 miles. 



Thunder-storm on the i8th. 



The usual summary by decades is given below. 



