PRELIMINARY REPORT -ON FORESTRY. 
NATURAL CONDITIONS. 
The vast country assigned to the writer for investigation is bounded 
on the east by the Mississippi, on the west by the winding chain of the 
Rocky Mountains, and extends from the British possessions to the warm 
waters of the Gulf. It embraces the States of Minnesota, Iowa, Mis- 
souri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, and a portion of 
Colorado, and portions of the Territories of Dakota, Montana, Idaho, 
New Mexico, Arizona, and the Indian Territory. Of this region the 
States of Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana are largely covered with 
native forests, and Arkansas in particular stands in need of facilities for 
bringing her magnificent lumber to market, and the day, it is hoped, is 
not far distant when the cypress of Arkansas will be as well known as 
the pine of Michigan and Wisconsin. Outside of these three States— 
Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana, which will be set aside for the pres- 
ent, to be spoken of hereafter—there yet remains an empire to which 
the subject of forestry is at present a vital one. The Mississippj 
throughout its length is lined by forests which increase in width as the 
number and size of its tributaries increase in volume. It is the presence 
of this great river which may be said to make forest States of the three 
we have mentioned. 
In Minnesota the belt of forest is comparatively narrow; in Iowa 
somewhat wider, and it is in those States that the great prairie region 
begins which extends to the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains. Going 
west from the Mississippi the Missouri is encountered, lined with forests 
for the last 200 miles in its course, above that running through a com- 
paratively deforested region. 
At the Missouri begins the ascent to the Rocky Mountains, the great 
field for the future exercise of all that man has learned or can acquire 
of the science of forestry. This region, as the elevation increases, be- 
comes more bare, and, to the eye accustomed to mountains and forests, 
desolate. The forest keeps up a gallant struggle along the streams 
which flow eastward to the Mississippi and Missouri, the Platte, the 
Kaw, and the Arkansas, but finally diminishes to a thin, winding fringe 
of cottonwood or willows, and the eye for hundreds of miles sees no 
more till the pine-covered slopes of the Rocky Mountains appear dimly 
in the horizon. The traveler, coming within sight of the mountains and 
then turning southward, comes to New Mexico, with its mountains, 
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