244 
NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
The 
prairie, 
Treeless 
tracts. 
Lower down than the table-land comes the 
American ‘‘prairie.” It is not so abrupt in 
form as the table-land, but was once very like 
it in the feeling of wildness which it fostered. 
The name was originally given by the French 
voyageurs to the flat plains of Mlinois and 
Indiana; but it has been applied of late years 
chiefly to the long rolls of land that stretch 
across Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. 
Their forms have been likened to the great 
swells of a tropical sea. The land rises in crests 
called ‘‘ divides,” and sinks into hollows called 
“‘swales.” The grass once grew rank and tall 
on these prairies, bending and rolling in the 
wind, but from their earliest discovery trees 
have been known upon them only in isolated 
spots along river bottoms. The absence of 
trees on these fertile lands has never been satis- 
factorily explained. They grow there readily 
enough to-day when planted by man, but for 
centuries nature planted and grew nothing but 
grass. It is said that the burning of the grass 
by the Indians, to drive game, destroyed the 
timber-growth, but the explanation is of doubt- 
ful value. The great conflagration of the plains 
that the Indian novelist has told us about, is at 
best a lively piece of the imagination. In cer- 
