less than $20,000,000. They say that they would be most happy to believe 

 that this enormous loss springs from causes evanescent in their nature, and 

 destined speedily to pass away, to return nevermore. But they feared that 

 these vast losses are but "the beginning of sorrow," and, that the improvi- 

 dence which laid open their fields to that scourge of Crod, the southwest 

 wind, by the wholesale destruction of their forests, is now only beginning to 

 reap the fruit of that want of forethought; and that these losses can be 

 avoided only by restoring in part at least, the natural barriers against the 

 wind. 



If we enquire for the cause and origin of this wind which has made such 

 havock, in New York and Michigan, since the cutting away of the forests of 

 those states, we shall find it nearer our own door than theirs. Nor is it alone 

 a cold southwest wind, which chills, freezes, congeals and dries the sap of 

 life out of vegitation, that is to be dreaded, but equally to be shunned is 

 the same southwest wind, when in another portion of the year, it becomes 

 as fearfully dry and hot as the sirocco from the burning sands of Africa. 



Giiographers have fixed the center of the United States near the city of 

 Lawrence, in Kansas. The thermometrical observations taken at Leaven- 

 worth, 26 miles from this center, for many years have shown " that Fort 

 Leavenworth was subjected, beyond any other part of the United States 

 where similar observations had then been inade, to sudden and extreme 

 changes both of heat and cold, of moisture and drought." Since the settle- 

 ment of Kansas, the terrible droughts experienced, and the many men who 

 have perished with the cold on the plains between the Missouri river and 

 Kew Mexico and Salt Lake, bear evidence to the truth of the observations at 

 Leavenworth ; being more than confirmed by those of Fort Larned and 

 other posts on the Arkansas and its branches. 



And this is to be expected in the nature of things. There is no large 

 body of water in the central part of the North American continent, west of 

 the Missouri river, which is able to exert any controling influence upon the 

 temperature of all that region. When we go north from Leavenworth five 

 degrees, we are in a cold and frozen climate, closed early in the fall, and 

 looked in frost until late in the spring. Pass five degrees southward, and we 

 have almost forsaken the region where ice may be said to form: hence this 

 middle ground is wholly controlled by the prevailing type of the season, in- 

 terspersed with the sudden and ofttimes violent injection of short periods of 

 temperature from the opposite points of the compass. Thus the general 

 winter may be mild, without snow, with scarcely frost enough to prevent 

 ploughing a single week through the entire winter, and still there may come 

 days when the thermometer will sink to 30 or 40 degrees below zero. On the 

 other hand, in a long, cold, snowy winter, a period of very spring or early 

 summer, as regards its balminess and comfort, may break in with equal 

 suddenness. 



The same latitude upon either the Atlantic or Pacific coast is no criterion 



