1876.] Plain, Prairie, and Forest. 637 
long, low, undulating rolls and low ranges of hills and ridges. 
In some places it is flat, with swales and sloughs of limited extent, 
between moist marshes and black, fat meadow lands. A few trees 
skirt along Coon Creek, and scattered patches of timber in one 
or two other places relieve the level landscape. A broad, rich, 
comparatively level Illinois prairie, these hundred noble sections 
preserve yet some of that primitive beauty which gave two town- 
ships [Spring and Flora] their names. Before the busy teeming 
millions of the sons of toil swarmed over the fertile West, prairie 
flowers, in spring-like beauty and autumnal glory, bloomed where 
now the glancing plow-share turns the spring furrow, and the 
golden-ripened wheat-fields dally with the fugitive winds. The 
purple and golden clouds of flowers that used to lay on these 
Prairies are now no more; but in their place the tasseled Indian 
corn waves its head, and men are growing rich from the cultiva- 
tion in useful crops of these old flower-beds of nature.” 1 
Again, from the Missouri Reports: “ Timber is not very abun- 
dant in Saline Cénnty: c a Throughout almost its entire area, 
there is a deep, rich, black soil, of unsurpassed fertility. The 
ĉase with which these beautiful, rich, mellow prairie lands can 
be cultivated almost makes the toil of the husbandman a pleasure, 
while their freedom from rocks, roots, stumps, and other impedi- 
ments enables him to use the various modern labor-saving agri- 
cultural implements with astonishing effect.” ? Next, from the 
lowa Report : “ The scarcity of timber has, doubtless, had much 
to do in retarding the settlement of this fine region [Ida 
E The soil throughout the county is mainly of 
bhg origin. It consists of a buff-colored, exceedingly finely com- 
minuted silicious earth. The bluff formation overspreads the 
| tire county, enveloping the uplands in a deep mantle of the 
Peculiar silicious deposit of which it is composed. In the south- 
ern portion of the county it probably attains its greatest thick- 
pes, where it cannot be less than one hundred feet.” è Tt seems 
: wdly necessary to multiply quotations of this kind, as might 
be done to any extent. No person can have traveled through 
uthern Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, or Missouri, without having 
everywhere occasion to notice the prairie soil and to find out 
7 ey its characters are, and that, as a general rule, 18 parent 
Sly fine and deep. There are whole counties In towa where 
1 . 
p Vorthen’s Illinois Report, v. 95. id 
a a Ports of the Geological Survey of Missouri, 1855-1871, pp- ; 
lm, A. White in Geology of Iowa, ii. 163. 
xo. 11. 42 
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