BARREN AND EDMONSON COUNTIES. 5 
and the variety of industry it brings in its train, the industries 
in wood are superior to all other forms of manufacturing. 
The scientific questions connected with our \Vestera forests 
are even as interesting as those of an economical nature. 
While they must be reserved for special discussion in tie 
memoirs of the Survey, where, as matters of purely scientific 
value, they will find their proper place, a brief statement of 
some of the most important points may be admitted here. [n 
connection with the ancient barrens or prairies, which gave 
their name, in itself a misnomer, to Barren county, one of the 
most fertile regions in the State, we have two important ques- 
tions: First, as to the origin of the treeless conditions which 
prevailed there when our race first came into the region; and 
secondly, how the retimbering was effected. The discussion 
of the first of these questions will lead us far into the difficult 
problems connected with the origin of prairies. I would only 
suggest, that inasmuch as the forests came back on the stop- 
page of the fires, to which reference is made in the following 
report of Professor Hussey, it is not unreasonable to look to 
for sweeping fires as the cause of the first destruction of the 
timber. We have seen within a few years how forest fires, 
once gaining headway in an unusually dried forest, may sweep 
over hundreds of miles of territory. A practice of firing prai- 
ries long continued might in time extend their limits from the 
regions where they are natural, from the absence of sufficient 
rainfall, over more and more of the forest area, until the prairie 
area had been driven from the Upper Missouri into the central 
regions of the Ohio Valley. This seems to me the most satis- 
factory method of accounting for the change. 
The rapid restoration of the timber in Kentucky and parts 
of Indiana and Ohio, while the prairies of Illinois show but 
little tendency to restore their timber, is less easily to be ex- 
plained. Iam inclined, after considerable study of the matter. 
to conclude that the ‘‘barrens”’ or prairies of Kentucky had not 
been long stripped of their timbering, the period of open con- 
ditions having endured for such little time that the seeds of the 
‘trees had not all decayed in the soil. In no other way could the 
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