CLIMA TIC CHANGES IN THE PRAIRIE REGION. 307 



period of years, this fact repeats itself as often as in those states where an ex- 

 perience of generations has demonstrated their adaptation to wheat raising, he 

 would disbelieve any assertion not in unison with the facts. On the one hand, he 

 would be slow to expect that his field could average seventy bushels to the acre ; 

 on the other hand, he would laugh at the statement that the soil was too poor, or 

 the supply of rain too small for profitable wheat growing. However valuable the 

 facts and theories of the general science relating to agriculture may be, and many 

 of them are valuable, still the best of all possible evidence to any practical man 

 is the bins and the ledgers." With just such logic, and faith in the kind of 

 prayer that taking hold of the plow-handles believes in the immutability of 

 nature's laws, are people filling up the prairies of Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Col- 

 orado, Dakota, Wyoming and Montana, satisfied with, and proving better than 

 any theory worked out in the studies of the scientists, that the Great Plains are 

 intended for the habitation of man, but to be wrought out by his immortal genius, 

 through which he will yet see grand states grow up among the rocky peaks, and 

 in the interior of the continent hitherto considered a desert and a waste. 



We must be convinced in face of the facts presented that the climate west of 

 the Missouri has changed, and that this change coincides with the advance of 

 civilization into the interior prairie region. It is certain that the rain-fall has in- 

 creased, and if the influences are correctly assigned, the ameliorating modifica- 

 tions will be progressive over the whole central area. Each season witnesses a 

 larger portion of the whole domain subjected to the demands of the inrushing 

 immigration, and greater encroachments of the forest growth. In Texas, Kansas, 

 Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming. Dakota, Montana and Utah, these modifying 

 influences are extending, and it is no wild flight of the imagination to predict 

 such corrective changes as are witnessed to-day over portions of the interior of 

 the continent, for the entire prairie region, and the results obtained justifies the 

 belief that the creation of forests through the agency of man in a district pri- 

 marily devoid of trees, will bring about conditions the opposite of those which a 

 like agency in other countries has effected by destroying them. 



Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and portions of Ohio, are confirmatory 

 proof of the argument that civilization ameliorates climate. Increased growth 

 of timber in those states has resulted in greater regulating and more equable 

 distribution in the rain-fall. In the early settlement of Iowa, twenty-five years 

 ago, that state was the theater of destructive inundations, excessive drouths, and 

 sudden changes of temperature ; all these phenomena have disappeared in a re- 

 markable degree. Eastern Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, in the vicinity of Den- 

 ver, Eastern Texas and the great Salt Lake Valley ; in short, in all localities of 

 the " Western Wilds" where civilization has established itself, nature has evinced 

 her readiness to second man in his efforts to subdue the primitive region to his 

 uses; and the changes the above mentioned districts have experienced, the 

 region in the Central Plains is experiencing, although it is only ten years since the 

 immigrant wandered into their confines. 



The indigenous trees of the plains west of the ninety-eighth meridian, are 

 20 



