112 INFORMATION FOR EMIGRANTS, 



In Kansas the timber area was estimated in 1872 at 4.92 per cent., 

 -chiefly in the eastern part of the State. This area has been much 

 .reduced since then by the large demands for lumber and fuel in that 

 State. 



Mr, Manhattan, of Kansas, thus speaks of the want of timber screens 

 in that State : ^ 



/ kave seen the soil in exposed situations blown aivay to a depth of six 

 inches, or as deep as the land had been plowed, in a single season. An 

 effective shelter-belt would not only remedy this evil, but would serve 

 largely as a preventive of drought; first, by measurably warding off the 

 dry, hot winds that sometimes sweep over the country as a blighting, 

 withering curse; and secondly, as a shelter for the snow that is other- 

 wise blown away into the ravines and hollows where it is not needed ; 

 -and again, in breaking the force of the fierce storms that almost every 

 ^season do more or less injury to the growing corn and other farm crops. 



Many other facts could be cited, but enough has been given to show 

 the want of timber in the Northwest as a protection. The wants for 

 fuel and building material are great and increasing. The severe winters 

 render shelter for stock imperative. It would be easy to show, from 

 the reports of Geo. B. Emerson and others, who have made a study of 

 the resources of the pine regions around the great lakes, that the supply 

 from that region will be exhausted in ten or twelve years, y The North- 

 west must then depend on the South for its supply of timber, and the 

 distance is so great that the freights will add much to the cost of the 

 timber. South of the Ohio river, as fast as timber is cut down, new 

 woods grow up, unless the land is put in cultivation; and whenever land 

 is abandoned, the young trees grow up with great rapidity. Unlike the 

 experience of the more humid regions of the Atlantic States, timber- 

 . culture west of the Mississippi has difficulties to encounter which require 

 energy and patience to overcome. During the past summer the grass- 

 hoppers proved very destructive to young trees, especially to seedlings. 



Climate. 



I find upon examination that nearly, if not all of the immigration 

 publications from the NorthAvest, attack the climates of the States south 

 of the Ohio river. A comparison of climates is therefore desirable. It 

 will be seen, from examination of the temperature chart published in the 

 United States Statistical Atlas (Plate VIII), that Virginia, Western North 

 Carolina, Northern South Carolina, Northern Georgia, Northern Ala- 

 bama, Tennessee, and Kentucky have a mean annual of from 52° to 60°. 



* Transactions of ihe Kansas State Horticultural Society for 1875, P^ge 113. 



it See proceedings of Northwestern Lumbermen.'s Association, held at Chicago, 1881, 



