304 CL1MA TIC CHANGES IN THE PRAIRIE REGION 



prairies beyond the Missouri with arborescent forms depends only upon a proper 

 system of culture, and a true conception of its importance. 



The results of timber growth on the prairies of the far-west, and into the 

 "desert" of the early writers, is something astonishing. Want of space pre- 

 cludes the idea originally intended of tabulating what the writer has observed, 

 but a visit to those regions will disclose to the most casual looker on a remarkable 

 picture of incipient forest to-day, either on the bottoms or on the uplands of any 

 locality where civilization has established itself. 



These groves of puny timber, far beyond the ninety-eighth meridian, have 

 in some sections already given, to the traveler passing through, the appearance of 

 a wooded country. More than three hundred miles beyond the Missouri, in 

 Kansas, at an altitude of over two thousand feet above the sea level, the young 

 tree plantations of cottonwood have made in two years a growth of from eight 

 to twelve feet; the box-elder from three to six, and the white ash about two feet. 

 All of these varieties are indigenous, and are found fringing the streams, from 

 which localities the seeds are gathered and the slips cut. Apples and peaches 

 have been raised successfully for some years on and beyond the ninety-eighth 

 meridian, and, still farther west, cherries and peaches in the new settlements have 

 come into bearing. The wild plum which grows in profusion far beyond the 

 ninety-eighth meridian, rivals its domestic brother of the old orchards of the east ; 

 so much so that some which the writer had forwarded for exhibition at the Cen- 

 tennial, in the Kansas display, were pronounced by Hon. A. Gray, Secretary of 

 the State Board, superior to the cultivated species. 



The prairie soil seems to possess a wonderful inherent power in the develop- 

 ment of root-growth. In 1866 or 1867, the students of the Commercial College 

 at Topeka, established a short line of telegraph for the purpose of instruction, 

 and used as one of the poles a green cottonwood six or seven inches in diameter, 

 sawed square at both ends, and denuded of its limbs. This log — for it could not 

 be called anything else — was set up on the main street, on the high ridge on 

 which the town is built, and far from any water-course. It took root, and to-day 

 is a magnificent tree twenty inches in diameter, with huge, overspreading 

 branches, and taller than the fine buildings in the vicinity ; in fact, I am told that 

 the limbs have been cut back repeatedly, so rapid has been its growth. 



A favorite method of commencing forest plantations in many portions of the 

 prairie region beyond the Missouri, is to plow under green saplings deprived of 

 their limbs and notched at intervals, from which a shoot appears above the ground 

 and takes root as the parent stem decays. 



The rapidity with which forests can be made to reach proportions that will 

 have a visible effect on the climate of a region, is remarkable, and the relatively 

 short period required to bring about these conditions on the plains, has been one 

 of the greatest incentives to forest growth on the prairies of the far-west. Time, 

 then, does not enter so largely into the problem as one would at first imagine, 

 and this fact is being duly appreciated by the pioneer civilization of the country 

 beyond the Missouri. 



