CLIMATIC CHANGES IN THE PRAIRIE REGION. 313 



feel compelled to omit the mass of testimony I have collected from the most reli- 

 able sources, and which I deem necessary to a complete discussion of the ques- 

 tion, for it is only by a rigid examination of authentic data that we are able to 

 reach correct conclusions. To accomplish what I desired originally is impossible 

 in the scope of a magazine, and we must be content with a mere skimming of 

 the surface, which is all this article aspires to. 



It is not within the province of this paper to enlarge upon the terrific 

 destruction of timber in the forest regions of the United States, and the dire 

 results that must inevitably follow if we can rely upon the light which history 

 has thrown upon the subject of disboscation. But the lament will come from 

 the next generation, as some writer has truthfully expressed it: "The peo- 

 ple of this will only boast the swift change of the wood and the wilderness to the 

 fertile field, and exult in the lines of towns and cities which spring up along its 

 water-courses and overlook its lakes." 



Three hundred years ago, Palissy, recognizing the indifference of present to 

 future generations in this wanton destruction of forests, wrote: "When I con- 

 sider the value of the least clump of trees, or even thorns, I much marvel at the 

 great ignorance of men, who, as it seemeth, do nowaday study only to break 

 down, fell and waste the fair forests which their forefathers did guard so closely. 

 I would think no evil of them for cutting down the woods did they but replant 

 again some part of them, but they care not for the time to come, neither reck 

 they of the great damage they do to their children which shall come after them." 



It requires no wondrous flight of the imagination to picture the physical con- 

 dition of the United States in the next century, when the forests shall have been 

 stripped from the granite hills of New England, from the Adirondacks, the Alle- 

 ghanies, the far-reaching wooded borders of the Great Lakes, and the region 

 east of the Mississippi. Then, if the people of the prairies west of the Missouri 

 have been diligent in profiting by the examples of history, and have listened to 

 the teachings of nature, let us imagine ourselves, with enlarged vision, standing 

 upon one of the exalted peaks of the Snowy range, and describe the panorama 

 spread out before us : Far beyond, like a gleam of sunshine, separating the con- 

 tinent into two widely diversified regions, flows the mighty Mississippi, the only 

 river of its kind in the world. On its bosom is freighted to the ocean the pro- 

 ducts of the different latitudes through which it winds its majestic course. On 

 either side are aggregated the vast manufacturing interests of the wonderful em- 

 pire grown up in its fertile valley. The materials for the evolution, through the 

 medium of mechanical genius into the forge and the loom, are transported to the 

 vast continents of workshops by a magnificent network of railroads. In the old 

 States, an impoverished soil induced by their denudation of timber, has reduced 

 their once boasted productiveness to zero, while intense drouths, deluging storms 

 and fitful variations of temperature mark the meteorological conditions of their 

 whole area. That once fertile region has been rendered almost uninhabitable 

 through the wantonness of man, and its former proud civilization transferred to 

 the prairies beyond the Missouri. The "Great American Desert," depicted so 

 graphically in the geographies of the last generation, has disappeared, and in its 

 place is presented a system of agriculture such as the world scarcely ever dreamed 

 of — marvelous in its results and grand in its diversity. 



