r 



2G8 SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



greens, deciduous forest-trees, and fruit-trees, such as flour- 

 ish in all the arable and habitable portions of our country. 

 Every one will now admit that trees flourish upon the 

 prairies. In proof of the fact, the prairie farmers are ac- 

 tively engaged in their introduction. "The prairies * * *," 

 says Gerhard,* "may be easily converted into wooded land 

 by destroying with the plow the tough sward which has 

 formed itself on them. There are large tracts of country 

 where, a number of years ago, the farmers mowed their 

 hay, that are now covered with a forest of young, rapidly- 

 growing timber. * * * A resident of Adams County testi- 

 fies to the effect that locust-trees planted, or, rather, sown 

 on prairie land near Quincy, attained in four years a height 

 of twenty-five feet, and their trunks a diameter of from four 

 to five inches. * * * In like manner, the uplands of St. Louis 

 County, Missouri, which were in 1823 principally prairie 

 lands, are now covered with a growth of fine and thrifty 

 timber, so that it would be difficult to find an acre of prai- 

 rie in the county." This testimony is confirmed by num- 

 bers of persons from various parts of the state whom I 

 have questioned on the subject. The introduction of tim- 

 ber as a branch of rural industry is now systematically 

 pursued. The principal drawback to the cultivation of' 

 forests and fruit-trees is the violence of the prairie winds 

 and the occasional severity of the wintry weather. 



If what I have suggested in reference to the persistent 

 vitality of buried vegetable germs be true, we have a 

 ready, simple, and beautiful solution of this long-vexed 

 problem. 



There are pretty satisfactory evidences that the soil of 

 the prairies is of lacustrine origin. It has the fineness, color, 



* Illinois as it Is, p. 277. Compare also Wells's Amer. Jour. Set. and 

 Arts, i., 331 ; Engelmann, Ibid. [2], xxxvi., 389 ; Edwards's Rept. DepL 

 of Agric., 1862, p. 495. 



