Bureau County, Illinois - Chapter 2, 1885

Of The Prairies, Etc., Etc., Etc

WHY HISTORY INTERESTS Us - WHAT is HISTORY? - LAWS OF DKVELOPMEHT - THE SOIL AND ITS WONDERS - IMPORTANCB OF TEACHING IT TO ALL - NEEDS OF OCR PEOPLE - THE COMING PUBLIC SCHOOLS - LEARNED IGXOBANCE SHOULD STOP Now - EARLY ILLITERACY AND MODERN DEMORALIZATION COMPARED - WHO ARE THE REAL IMMORTALS - TRUE PHILOSOPHY AND KINDLY THOUGHT - TEACHING EBROK A CHIME - How TO EDUCATE - AN AGRICULTURAL PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE AN AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION - INSTANCES GIVEN - EDUCATION THE MOST PRACTICAL THING IN THE WORLD - GEOLOGICAL HISTORY, ITS IMMENSITY AND IMPORTANCE - THE BOCKS, SOIL AND CLIMATE - GEOLOGY OF BUREAU COUNTY - COAL-MEASURES - THE WONDERFUL STORIES OF THE PRAIRIES, ETC., ETC., ETC.

MAN'S nature is such that he is deeply concerned in the movements of those who have gone before him, and this interest intensifies the closer the strain of blood that binds him to the memories of those predecessors. If his earliest forefathers had their forerunners, even if they were of an unknown time and race, either savages or enlightened, who lived and struggled and died, passing away and leaving not a wrack behind, their term reaching beyond the gray dawn of earliest history, yet their dimmest marks and fossil remains are deeply interesting, and beckon us on in the eager hunt to unlock the mystery that has so swallowed them up. Who were they? How did they live; what did they do; what did they know? Where were they from ? How did they so completely pass away from the face of the earth"* And when the inquiry comes down to the period of the immediate ancestors of the inquirer the interest intensifies, and the minutest, dry details become profoundly interesting. Were they wise or foolish, strong or weak, happy or wretched? And we re-create in the mind as well as we can the picture of their daily and hourly life, customs, habits, temperaments, their wisdom and follies, successes and failures.

The proper study of mankind is man. Here is the great fountain of valuable knowledge; and the " man" that is best studied, at least is the easiest and best to understand, are our immediate forefathers or predecessors. To know all about them is all you can learn of the human race that it is essential to know. To solve the complex problem cannot be done by a surface knowledge of all the races, but by a thorough comprehension of those about whom your every nature and impulse leads you along in the investigation.

Could the graduates of the schools be turned out with their diplomas, when these would mean that they knew the history of their own race, to a degree even approaching perfection, then indeed might we rest content in the possession of that great boon, the best educated people in the world ; the word history being here used in that broad and true sense that means a mastery of the highest type of knowledge, the understanding of the mental and physical laws, and in contradistinction of those terms the annals, the chronology, the dates, the disconnected and often trifling incidents that were once considered history, such as the births of kings and princes, their deaths and pompous burials, battles, famines, epidemics, great conflagrations or political revolutions. A true history of a people is a mastery of the laws of race and the laws of heredity, climate and soil, epoch, momentum - the understanding of the laws of mind -growth as well as those controlling the growth of the physical body, society, church, State and all the wonderful developments of a civilized people.

Everything is a growth - a development - a passing from the simple to the complex. Thus it commences with the legends, then the traditions, the chronicles, the annals, and last, the history: the bud, the seed, the tender sprout, the sapling, and the tree, which in the long years is drawing its sap and food from the deep soil and giving off its luscious fruit in the distant and glorious summer. The greatest always is the slowest and last to perfect itself. Hence, we say, the true conception of history is modern, and so far we have yet no complete history of any race or people, but the materials for the coming historian have been being gathered since the days of Herodotus. "When the world is ready for this great man he will come, and in a single book he will confer upon mankind something incomparably superior to all that has ever yet come from the printing press.

Some geological ages ago preparations commenced to make this the fit abode for man. The oscillations of the earth's surface commenced, it is said by geologists, about the Huron region on this continent, forming there the first dry land, and this process proceeded slowly in a southwesterly direction until our hemisphere has grown and fashioned itself much as we have it now. The commencement of this continent-building was the yielding up by the waters of the first pages in geological history. And what can be more interesting and instructive than these wonderful and unfailing records, when

The soil is the Alma Mater - the nourishing mother, indeed - of all animate life in this world. Without it nothing - from it all that we possess. The wealth and joys, the hopes and ambitions, the beauties of nature and of art, the new mown hay, the maiden's blush, the love lit eye, the floating Armada, the thundering train, the flaming forge and the flying spindle, the hand of friendship, the sweet rippling laughter of childhood, all that we can conceive of utility or beauty, mentally or physically, are from the cold, dull soil upon which we tread. From here alone comes life and all its belongings.

The sun worshipers were not base in their adorable ideal - light and heat were the near approach to the sources of life, and yet it was only an aid to the soil; a laboratory dissolving and combining the elements of the air and rocks and creating the soil, the great fountain of all. The works of these sun worshipers are scattered over the face of the earth, furnishing us some of man's earliest records. None ever worshiped the soil. For it they had no just appreciation; its allcommanding value is yet little understood, and in the world's slow progress the soil and the slavish drudge - the lowest menial and the ignorant lout were about the only things that were a part and portion of the soil or identified with it in men's minds; and for ages agriculture and unwashed ignorance were regarded as much one and the same thing. In that first nation whose air was too pure for a slave to breath, was inaugurated the long reign of a feudal system, where the laborer and the soil passed by the same title deed, and the allegiance and the lives of the serfs were bought and sold as the meanest of merchandise. While the soil has found no worshipers and but few who cared to understand its value, it has proceeded in its beneficent works, showering its benefits upon all until it has lifted us from dull and dirty savages into the joys of the splendid civilization that now smiles upon mankind.

Why should we teach our children to understand the stupid dirt beneath their feet? Build schoolhouses and teach them metaphysics - the involved and abstruse speculations and problems that dazzle and bewilder the mind; make them classical scholars and take them far away from the dirt that flies as dust, sticks to your clothes as mud, and is only vile and nasty. And thus a vital error has gone on and on, and is still wielding its power for evil throughout the world.

The soil comes of the rocks, and except in the instances of drift, its component parts may be instantly identified with the subjacent rocks, and in the drift sections, as is nearly all the surface of Illinois, the underlying rocks are always the index to the surface qualities. To the intelligent eye that examines the stratified rocks of a country it is plain enough what elements of plant food it contains, and what particular vegetation it will best produce.

JDurjaeople are agricultural in their pursuits. The Mississippi Valley will be the storehouse and granary of the world. It can always say to hungry man, " In thy Father's house is enough and to spare.'' With its wholesome and generous products, it will freight the ships whose sails will fleck every sea. Teach the people to read the secrets of the soil, and give them cheap transportation and the unobstructed and free markets of the world, and then, indeed, will come that boundless wealth which nurtures those master spirits among men who shape and fix the proud destiny of civilization.

school men, that the public schools should be organized and operated in reference to locality or the peculiar controlling interests of the people; that certain portions of the world will produce different industries, and different occupations for the people; that one place is for mining, another for certain manufactories, and another for agriculture, and of this last we have an endless variety of products. One portion of our country produces mostly rice, another cranberries, another sugar, another tobacco, and often a bingle variety of the many kinds of this product, another cotton ; and then we have here, in the "Upper Mississippi Valley, that wonderful garden for the production of that great variety in abundance, including nearly everything except those articles named above. And to this is added the raising of stock, which nearly equals the immense values of the immediate soil products.

The coming school teacher will see to it that the bent of the schools are directed to best preparing the rising generation for the successful struggle of life by educating them for their life surroundings. There is nothing so practical in life as knowledge, and the best knowledge is that which betters men's lives. A common affliction all over the world is "learned ignorance," and a people may suffer more from this evil than from those illiterates whose columns of per cents figure in our census reports. There can be no census taken of "learned ignorance," and hence its prevalence in a people may not be easily detected, and its inflictions difficult to measure. The shrewd observer may pick them out by their loud advocacy of, and unfaltering faith in all the many errors that were instilled into them in their own school education. They believe wisdom is born as you first enter the school room, and is full grown and perfected when you leave its doors with a diploma; that knowledge is in the text (xK)ks, and that the professor who knows all these must be the greatest man in the world. It is this ' ' learned ignorance " that measures the people of a community by the schoolhouses, the number of teachers and the graduates they turn out, and the absence of illiterates among them. These are grievious errors, and they are most apt to pass from father to son, and thus become fixed as axiomatic truths.

It is the home influence, the laws of heredity, the environment of life, the age, the momentum and public sentiment that are man's architect and controlling influences. And the artificial, unphilosophical, empirical contrivances of the world's reformers and Dtopia builders, are as the feather in the ballance against the mountain in shaping men's destiny.

The schools upon which the present system is based, were founded seventeen hundred years ago, for the sole purpose of educating young men for the priesthood - to teach them how to teach morality - possibly how to proselyte. The study of the catechism and the Lives of the Saints were the whole of the curriculum. They were a mere addenda to the Catholic Church, and committing to memory constituted the entire process of the school room. They were Catholic schools, and in the course of the world's revolutions came the Lutheran, the Methodist, the Baptist, and the innumerable other schools as the sects multiplied, all enlarging the scope of their work, until they came to be the teachers of all classes of men. They wrangled and struggled and spread, keeping even pace with the growth and power of their respective sects, until sincere and good men were led to believe that knowledge and doxy were synonymous terms. Nothing has, perhaps, filled its mission better than the theological schools - Jew or Gentile. Their existence in the organization of society was probably an imperative necessity. But Jewish education to teach the child knowledge (understanding the mental and physical laws} i are ' ' Godless schools. " Education, we are told, is furnishing the mind mental food, as we give the physical body bread and meat. If Knowledge is a hard-shell Baptist, then why do we not hear of the Godless saw-mills, fish ponds, pig pens or cattle ranches?

The original idea of the school was to propagate morality. And the way men in that age thought, they were justified in the belief that if you cultivated the moral, the intellectual would take care of itself. Many able and good men think so now; possibly a large majority of mankind. And the roaring demagogue will tell you that the majority, especially the large majority, cannot be in

1 ble or ignoble, exactly as they are removed from the thrall of ignorance. Give people knowledge, and you give them, in exact proportion to the amount thereof, pure morality,

; virtue, health, and all that ennobles and makes them great and good. This alone is the great teacher and reformer. Ignorance is a thief, robber and murderer, and it is but idiocy that gabbles about the "bliss of ignorance." It is the monster criminal, and pity it all we may, its horrid possession of men, its grim and fatal clutch, can only be loosened by real knowledge, and not by " learned ignorance " nor sham reformers. Ignorance is the majority enthroned, levying blackmail and war, making laws and ruling empires, sowing

The trend of the average mind of this age is to education, to better its thoughts, to gain knowledge, and to this achievement it puts forth its best efforts. If it is given ' ' learned ignorance " for the genuine article, it cannot be blamed for taking the poison in the faith that it is healthful food.

Again, no one truth is the whole truth about even the simplest act or thing in life. To make a fire in the cook- stove, feed a pig or raise a hill of corn requires, in order to do either properly, to understand many of the physical laws applicable to each case. To rush at the doing of either with the mastery of only a single truth that will come in play, is to open a Pandora's box of disappointments, failures, evils. If this is true of the simplest acts of life, how much greater selfafflicted evils are going to come to us when we move in the great and complex affairs of life, our education, our political economy, our religion - in short, the individual and society life itself. Here come into play the innumerable and the great physical and mental laws - omnipotence itself - that must be at least partially understood and obeyed in order to live at all. It is this jumping at judgments that are founded upon one or two truths concerning little and great, affairs that brings the shams and frauds, the bigots and fanatics, the general demoralization and the " learned ignorance " that so retards the spread of knowledge among men, and thus beats back the cause of progress, and kills the brightest hopes that send their sunshine across life's pathway.

were^hen a greater ^necessity than any of these, and there was as little demand for .the luxurious pleasures of modern people as there was for the evils that accompany the increase of societies, and the denser population of these days. Being without schools, etc., they were also without penitentiaries or police officers.

vGov. Reynolds came to Illinois in the year ISOUf born in the old commonwealth of Pennsylvania. After he had lived here fifty-five years, he wrote down his recollections in his " Pioneer History of Illinois," of the people he found here when he came. He says, they were removed from the corruption of large cities, and enjoyed an isolated position in the vast interior of North America. He thinks that a century before 1800, they had solved for themselves the problem that neither wealth nor splendid possessions, nor an extraordinary degree of ambition, nor energy, ever made a people happy. They resided more than 1,000 miles from the older colonies; they were strangers to wealth or pinching poverty, but they possessed content and real Christian virtues of head and heart, and were consequently happy. Their ambition did not urge them to more than an humble and competent support, and their wants were few and simple. They did not strive to hoard wealth, they seldom drank to excess, and he pronounces them a " virtuous, contented and happy people."

This is the testimony of a man who tells what he saw, and he knew well the people of whom he is speaking. There are none living now who were here when Reynolds came, to tell their recollections of the people, and excepting what he tells us about them, we are ignorant, save faint traditions, shadowy tales reciting the story of

Accepting the "old Banger's" account of the people as literally true, we find they had no schoolhouses, and they were illiterate as a rule, and he who confounds the terms illiteracy and ignorance, would say they were, of course, very ignorant. Yet the truthjs, among the early settlers <<>£ - Illinois, history will forever preserve the fact that there were even then men here who, were they living now in the prime of their manhood, would take rank with the foremost men of the age. In the way of superstitious dreads and beliefs they were more ignorant than we are now - goblins, spooks and spells. Hideous apparitions then confronted men in every turn of life, projecting their ghastly presence into every family circle, between husband and wife, parent and child, and often crushing all the highest and holiest human impulses and passions.

The revolutions of the earth have, in the distant past, brought their long periods of the same faith and beliefs among the nations. Beliefs and moral codes that were enforced by eloquence, by pious frenzy, by the sword, the flame and faggot, by the gibbet and the headsman's ax and by those great and cruel wars that converted this bright and beautiful world into a blackened and desolate waste, and sincere men became moral monsters, who converted the fireside into a penal colony, punishing the flesh until death was a welcome refuge, and torturing frightened imaginations with the pictures of a literal hell of fire and brimstone, until poor men and women and even children could only escape by suicide - that mad plunge into the inconceivable horrors of the damned. Time when, not only society, but all civilized nations, believed substantially the same beliefs, and hunted down heretics and billed them; when

State and church were one and the same thing. The State was supreme over body and mind, and legislated for body and soul, and glutted itself with persecutions and slaughters. It enacted that the literature and philosophy of the world was contained in the "Lives of the Saints," of which the pious and good had gathered many great libraries of hundreds of thousands of volumes.

Here then are the two extremes - the earliest pioneers without State or church - the old world with little or nothing else but church and State. The latter went daft and dried up the fountains of the human heart, and made the world desolate and sterile: the first wresting the desert wilderness from the savage and the wild beasts, and literally making the solitude bloom, and bear the immortal fruit of glorious deeds. These Stateless, schooless, churchless, illiterate people blazed the way and prepared the ground for the coming of the school teacher and the church, the lawyer and the hospitals, the insane asylums and the penitentiaries, the lessons of life and the hangman's rope, the saloons and the gambler, the broken-hearted wife and the bloated sot, the sob of innocence betrayed, and the leering human goats as they wag their scut and caper upon their mountain of offense, the millionaire and the tramp, and the other perhaps inevitable evils that mar and check the joys and blessings of larger and older societies. In the slow growth of our common pests, intertwining their roots and branches with the beautiful and the good, most fortunately there can be found the gleams of sun- light from those who came and asked questions, who dared to investigate and ' ' drag up drowned truths by the locks." In the long " night of storm and darkness " these were the beacon lights shining out upon the troubled waters.

awoke the resting echo, and had fought out the long battle with the beasts and the savage, there came together here from the ends of the world the various degrees of life and social rank that now offer to the State historian the busiest, most extended and varied subjects for an enduring literary work - a story that of itself is an epic poem: their present struggles, their vast schemes of empire, their growing wealth, their grand successes, their short-comings and great failures - the swing of the pendulum in the vast clock of God, ticking off the centuries and geological ages. The sweeps onward and upward, the retreats and revulsions backward, the sublime march of the human race, the travail of the ages, the revolutions, wars, beliefs and bloody reforms and revivals - things that seem to retard, but really are the demonstration of the progress of man ; all is but the creation, molding and building up of that philosophy that reaches out to the great mass of mankind, and results in that culture and experience which deepens and strengthens the common-sense of the people, rectifies judgments, improves morals, encourages independence and dissipates superstitions. In this prolonged human tragedy of the ages - this apparent chaos of ignorance and riot of bigotry and all shades of persecution - there have been born at certain undeviating periods, the great thoughts of the world's few thinkers, giving us the truth, which grows and widens forever, for it alone is immortal, and in time it yields us a philosophy that worships the beautiful only in the useful, and the religious only in the true: a philosophy that is the opposite and contradiction of sentiment as opposed to sense; that requires a rational personal independence of thought on all subjects, whether secular or sacred, and that equally rejects an error, whether it is fresh and novel, or gloriously gilded by antiquity - a philosophy that yields no homage to a thing because it is a mystery, and accepts no ghostly authority administered by men, and the root of which lies in a florid mysticism. There is now a perceptible intellectual activity that marks the present age, and that is beginning to pervade all classes, asking questions, seeking causes. It is practical, not theoretical, and its chief aim is to improve the arts and industries, to explore and remedy evils, and to make life every way better worth living. Its types are the electric light, the telephone, better ships and railways, draining the lands and cleaner habits and better houses, healthier food and wiser institutions for the sick, destitute and insane. And scored upon its victorious banners is that one supreme boon of lengthening the average life of a generation ten years. Let the mind dwell a moment upon this magnificent miracle, and then call these men, these practical philosophers, what you please, but tell us what coronet is fit to bind their brows, save that of the divine halo itself. They taught mankind the sublime truth that God intends us to mind things near us, and that because knowledge is obtainable, it is our duty to obtain it, and that the best morality or religion is that which abolishes suffering and makes men and women wiser, healthier and better; that the disputes of the schoolmen and the sectarians are to be regarded as a jargon of the past, and to listen to them is time wasted; nothing is worth studying '.but what can be understood, or at least sufficiently understood to be usefully applied.

This is a kindly, tolerant, courageous thought, free from the disfigurement of bigotry and prejudice. It alone, and only it, brings the perceptible advancement in the school, the press and the pulpit and everywhere. It is irresistible, and its inflowing

The labors and sufferings of these men, who gave the average man the new lease of ten years of life, were long, patient and immeasurable, and their innocent and heroic blood has stained the stream of time from its source to the present hour. They worked out their inventions and discoveries, offered them to the world, and were led to the rack or became hiding fugitives from the inappeasable wrath of mankind. The brutal mob tore assunder their quivering limbs, threw their flesh to the dogs often, and then complacently erected those monumental piles to ignorance and baseness that pierced the heavens and disfigured the face of the earth.

Such was the long and unequal fight between ignorance and knowledge, and that is now going on, not with the bloody ferocity that characterized the ancient type of ignorance, but with equal determination and more cunning in its attacks, and more stealth in its assassinations. It can be conquered only by its extermination.

To look at the world in these travails - to reflect how pure and stainless is truth, how it, seeks modest seclusion and eludes notoriety, how weak it seems when assailed by the countless majorities, by panoplied ignorance, brute force and the wild fanatic and the relentless bigots, is to despair and conclude the creation itself is but a hideous nightmare. Yet looking down the long centuries, averaging the conditions of the people of the separated centuries, and then indeed do her white robed victories assume the proportions of the marvelous. In return for the persecutions and frightful deaths and tortures that were lying in wait upon every foot of the pathway of these children of thought, they have given us the sunlight of the gilded civilization we now enjoy. " Return good for evil," saiththe command of heaven; but here is more, for it is the freedom and joys, and noble hopes and pleasures that endure forever. It is the exaltation and purification of life itself far beyond the comprehension of the ignorant receivers of the heaven-sent boon. And above all, be it said in behalf of these great benefactors, no lash was ever raised, no law was ever enacted, no pain ever inflicted, no schoolhouse was ever built, no policeman ever starred, no judge was ever ermined, no sword was ever drawn, no diploma was ever granted, no tax was ever gathered, no contribution ever collected, and no mistake or crimes ever committed; but in pain and persecutions, in outlawry and poverty, in the cold garret and the hiding caves, they thought, invented and discovered, and their works are strong and great enough to lift up mankind, and bear aloft the freedom and glories of this great age.

Immortals! You lived and died in obscurity, but few of your names known to men, yet we say. great immortals! and bow the head in profound reverence and respect.

If it is once conceded that all real education is wholly practical - the most practical thing in life - then is it not self-evident that the schools of every people should be upon a system adapted to their leading and special wants - the habitat of that people ? Then, is not this further proposition true, namely, that the only way that real knowledge is diffused, placed in the hands of the average man in such a way that it may be of any intrinsic value to him, is to make it always experimental knowledge - through some of the five senses or all of them ?

University Of Illinois

How few grown people there are in the world who have not by experience, often sad and bitter, had to unlearn the lessons instilled into them, the errors that they once accepted as truths, either in the nursery or school room ? The average graduate even from our best modern institutions can count off these experiences in life by the score. He came from his Alma Mater stuffed with errors, and his future life was a success or failure just in proportion as he was successful in putting aside this costly ignorance. This is not saying that he got nothing at school of utility; but it is saying, that with the good, if any, he had to swallow the poison measured out by ignorance with the best intentions. He must learn to unlearn after he leaves school, and often this is the big end of his real education. At school he is set to delving among the classics, cultivating a taste for the abstruse and involved speculations of metaphysicians, and he sits in admiration at the feet of the inductive philosophers, contemplating the glories of their ethereal castles and the glittering splendors of their florid rhetoric. And weighted down with these tinkling cymbals, he enters the busy, practical world a ' ' very learned man," who is certain to be ingloriously unhorsed every time he comes in conflict with "horse sense," as the slang puts it, when it chooses to describe one of more knowledge than education. Because the "very learned " may be without much knowledge, and the man who never entered a university or college may have a vast store-house of knowledge. Neither of these are always true by any means, but the first should never be true, and would not if the schools were founded upon the best system.

How to best educate the rising generation, how to improve our schools, is the prime subject of importance to every one. And it is the duty of each who can to point out errors and to suggest improvements; not to take everything for granted that is claimed by its friends, and not to rest satisfied that a thing cannot be mended simply because of its antiquity. The aged think everything was incomparably better when they were young than it is now, and old and young think in some indefinite way that the ancient in everything was the best. The Free Mason can pay no higher eulogy to his order than to add to its name "ancient." The lawyer believes that in the black-letter of the law alone is the garnered wisdom of the fathers; and poets sing the glories of the mythical golden age. And all are more or less influenced to strive continuously to get things again back into the ancient, beaten paths, believing the follies they detect are the result of the unfortunate departure from the wisdom of the fathers. And so we may trace the influence and authority of the ancient throughout every institution and all the phases of society. Reference is made to this general peculiarity of the public bias in order to somewhat prepare the reader for a brief consideration of what is to immediately follow, and which is the leading idea to which the foregoing is all intended to point.

Illinois being peculiarly the home of an agricultural people, and this particular county being the very heart of the rich garden - possessing already a large population and rich and intelligent enough for as good and extensive piiblic and private society and educational institutions as any rich and cultured commonwealth, the people are ready for all practical improvements that may be properly presented to them. What is their chief educational interest then ? Clearly, it is the diffusion among the rising generations of a better and more general knowledge of the economical geology of this section of country.

To be taught the effects of their soil and climate ; where so much wealth is created as there is every year in this county - there is no estimating the money value of this knowledge. Let us illustrate: There is a county in southern Illinois that is splendidly adapted for raising apples. About forty years ago a man located there and started this industry, putting out extensive orchards and supplying the people with trees, and soon the orchards became numerous. The man had learned the business in a different part of the country, and supposed the best growing varieties where he formerly lived were the best in the new locality. Just now the fruit growers have learned that he was wholly mistaken. The result here is a generation whose energies were misdirected, and whose losses can hardly be estimated - a severe penalty for the want of that knowledge of soil and climate that the improved schools will some day impart. In the instance given, this knowledge by this single individual would have been worth more to the people than all they have paid for school purposes in fifty years.

Another large section may be found where for fifty years the people have been building houses, and yet the intelligent traveler cannot find a house containing the architectural beauty and conveniences of even the average better houses of some other localities. Upon looking into this strange fact it will be found that from the first the leading so-called architect and builder who did the first and for years the large part of house building knew little or nothing of modern improvements ; was an ignorant stickler for the ancient, and he clung to the obsolete.

Another county may be found in the Mississippi Valley where the tax books show more dogs than sheep. And the astounding part of the facts are that it is, or would be if it had the chance, the natural home of the sheep - where they can be raised to the best advantage and with the greatest profit. But the sovereigns in the exercise of their divine privileges run to dogs. One distinguished citizen's name on the tax books was charged with $8 dog tax. and 50 cents for all other property. The barbarous instinct that breeds these wretched cur dogs and revels in their possession, costs that particular county nearly a million dollars a year, and has for the past seventy-five years.

The spot most celebrated for the production of fine horses, especially the fleet-footed coursers, is the Blue Grass region in Kentucky. The horse -breeders have made money and fame, and many years ago they commenced an intelligent study of their locality and its especial adaptations. The constituent elements of soil, water, grasses, and an understanding of the peculiar blue limestone rock that is found in all this region, was scientifically investigated. To get the particular strain of horses adapted to their favored locality they turned their scientific attention to the study of the horse by long Observation and intelligent experiments. They hunted out effects, and then sought for the causes, and here, as everywhere in the world, practical knowledge of their surroundings has paid immensely. This part of their real education was with reference to their surroundings, to the immediate sources of their wealth, to their section of country, their home. Almost any work on the Kentucky horse will explain the difference in texture of the bone of one of their thorough-bred horses, or how much finer it is in texture than the common horse of other localities; that the bone is much heavier to the square inch, and comparatively approaches in fineness, compactness and strength to ivory. In a simi lar way the entire animal has been studied, and the results are known throughout the world.

We have no hesitation in affirming that the school children could be much more easily taught the elementary principles of the economical geology of this portion of the valley so as to comprehend them tolerably well, than they can be taught to grasp the understanding of the English grammar, or the majority of things now taught in the public schools. A competent teacher rambling about the hills and streams and highways with his pupils would at once see that he is in a practical way giving the young and naturally inquisitive mind the very food its hungry nature eagerly craved. If he was competent to really teach he would at once see before him a method of giving to his school information and some real knowledge that never could come in the lesson tasks of the school room, that mental stupefying routine process of committing to memory. They would learn geology exactly as a boy learns to be a carpenter or blacksmith, assisting in the work ; and this education, in the free air and sunlight, would be holiday playing with the keen zest of innocent childhood. There is no recitation here, no task, no stupid committing to memory, to be forgotten next week or next year, or at least very soon after leaving school. But there is gaining insight into some of the physical laws by the young mind, real knowledge, none of which will or can ever be forgotten. This is the differeuce between information and knowledge.

The geological history of a country determines its agricultural capacity, as well as the amount and kind of population it will eventually contain. It carries us back to a period when the material of which the earth is composed existed in a state of fusion, so intense that the solid elements we now see were in a gaseous state, and the process of cooling eventually formed the rocks, the base on which the thin earth's crust rests; rocks formed by the cooling of molten mineral matter as they are now formed by matter thrown out by existing volcanoes. These changes have been going on through countless ages, or better, through geological periods, immeasurable cycles, that tell us of the eternity of the past as well as the eternity of the future; the story of ceaseless changes, and that nothing is ever annihilated. A chemist may resolve a grain of sand into its original elements, but it still exists in another form. Life and death are bu: a part of the ceaseless changes in everything, a mere mode of motion, a great law of matter, working like the law of gravitation. All natural forces are manifested by motion. Each mineral assumes its peculiar crystallization with perfect certainty. This may be regarded, so far as we can investigate, as nature's first beginnings of organic creation, the first result of that great law that culminated in the highest forms of life.

Millions and billions of years have passed since the first organic life appeared in this world, and since the highest type of life - man - came', there are indubitable evidences that millions of years have again passed away. We are taught this by the incontestable records of geological history.

The system of rocks is, first, the igneous rocks or formations, then the stratified rocks, originally made of a sediment deposited in the bottom of the ocean. Sometimes the stratified rocks have been subjected to the action of heat and their condition thus changed into what are called metamorphic rocks. Thus sandstone is converted into quartz rock or quartzite, limestone into crystalline marble, etc. This process usually obliterates all traces of the fossils that are to be found in stratified rocks, and makes it often impossi-

These are the three distinct classes of rocks which enter into the formation of the earth's surface ; the simplest distinctions, which any child can learn as readily as its alphabet, and that contain the most interesting story in the universe, and are a great storehouse of knowledge.

The manner in which the stratified rocks are formed, the successive beds accumulating in regular order, one above another, represent distinct periods in the chronological history of the earth, and in these enduring leaves of history are found the fossils of the animals and plants that existed during the period of their formation. Thus the geological chronology of the earth is not only its correct history, but the only possible history of the various creation of plants and animals. And from the earliest corals of the primeval ocean down through all succeeding periods to the present time, there is the evidence that cannot be questioned, that in all animate life, as in the mineral and its various crystallizations, the same general plan or law in the formation of the four great sub-kingdoms of existing animals, played its resistless forces.

Some of the stratified rocks, especially the limestone, are composed almost wholly of the calcareous habitations and bony skeletons of the marine animals that lived in the ocean during the time these were in process of formation, with barely enough mineral matter to hold the materials together in a cemented mass. A similar process is going on now under the water, and thus making the imperishable records for those to read who may, many millions of years from now, come after us. The links in this long chain of geological history are joined together by the unerring characteristics of a common origin, that weaves them into a complete chain of organic existence - the astounding story from protozoa to man - the complete result of creative energy, that has worked forever and will never stop.

As is said elsewhere, nearly the entire surface of Illinois is drift, loess and alluvial deposits; reddish-brown clay forming the subsoil through this county, except beds of clean gravel that are found in certain localities ; loess being found along the streams, as it is a recent deposit of fresh water. A large portion of the drift came from a distance by the waters and glaciers, those crystal ships that once moved over Illinois, bearing their rich cargoes of food-plant and spreading them about for our enrichment. No sailors walked their glittering decks, no pilots directed their course or took their reckonings. It was nature's free and untrammeled commerce, carrying its boundless wealth to the oncoming generations.

Soils are composed mainly of mineral matter in a finely comminuted condition, to which is added the vegetable and animal matter accumulated on the surface. If there are no superficial deposits then the soil is formed by the decomposition of the rocks. If the rock is sandstone it will form a light sandy soil ; if a clay, shale or argillaceous rock, a heavy clay soil will be the result, and if a limestone a calcareous soil.

In the drift deposits will be found no valuable deposits of mineral wealth. It was ignorance of this fact that so often allured some of the early settlers of the country into patient and expensive hunts for silver and lead mines. Their education on the subject of soils was so imperfect that they could not see that the lead-producing regions of northwestern Illinois and portions of Wisconsin and Iowa, were in the driftless region.

The general configuration of the face of the county, its groves, streams, soil and general characteristics, have been the delight and admiration of all beholders. The fertile, rolling prairies, the timber skirting the streams, and the magnificent natural groves, standing like islands over the rich expanse of prairie. The streams wind in long and graceful curves ; the soil is deep, rich, warm and light. The staple products of this rich region, corn, grasses, fruits and potatoes, grow in boundless luxuriance.

Green River enters the county about twelve miles from its northwest corner, flows south with crooked windings through Greenfield Township, and then turns westward through the north part of Gold to the west county line, cutting off from the corner of the county Fairfield and parts of the two townships above named. In these two townships are the Green River swamp lands. Big Bureau Creek comes in from Lee County, near the northeast corner of Bureau. It flows in a general southwest direction to a point a short distance west of the city of Princeton; from thence it takes a south course for ten miles, and turns nearly due east, and empties into the Illinois Kiver, some five miles from where the south boundary line of the county strikes that river. The stream has very little alluvial land along its course. The prairies rise in rather abrupt swells from the banks of the creek. About Tiskilwa and on the Illinois River there is considerable rich bottom lands, covered with fine heavy timber. Little Bureau Creek has a tributary west of it, which rises in the northern part of the county and forming a junction a few miles southwest of Princeton. Coal Creek and Brush Creek are also drainage outlets of the county.

On the southeast corner of the county, the Illinois River forms the boundary line for a distance of sixteen miles. There is a broad alluvial bottom along the Bureau side. The lowest bottom is mostly a swampy, grassy plain, interspersed with sloughs, and ridges of river sand, and subject to inundations when the Illinois river sends out its floods over the low banks. One of these sloughs is Lake DePue, which communicates with the river at its southern terminus. The town of Trenton is built upon the west of this lake, half a mile from its outlet At ordinary stages of water, boats pass through this outlet and land at Trenton.

j)ad Joe's grove is in the northwestern part of the county, is on a very high elevation, and since the first discovery of the county has been a conspicuous landmark.

The grand undulating sweep of the prairies, and the great abundance of orchards and beautiful shade trees and the numerous cultivated groves, and improvements that dot the county thickly over, present to the eye as fine landscape scenery as can be found in the world.

But few counties in the State present so poor an opportunity for an examination of its geological formations. With the exception of the Illinois River and a small ravine near Tiskilwa, there is hardly an outcrop of rocky formation in the county. The excavations along the line of the C., B. & Q. road, which runs through the county a distance of forty-five miles, present some of the clay and gravel-beds only. The Rock Island & Chi- cago road traverses the roughest portion of the county, and the same is true here as on the Bureaus and their tributaries and Green River; and yet all these streams and railroads traversing the county in every direction, show no natural section of rocks. Most of the first bottom on the Illinois is subject to overflow, and but little of it can be cultivated, but such as is dry enough, yields enormous crops of corn. From forty to fifty feet above the first bottom of the Illinois River, and lying along its western bluff range, is the second bottom. This is from a few hundred yards to half a mile wide, and its surface is a sandy and marly clay, intermixed in places with marly-mixed gravels. It is a regular river terrace, and the traveler, from the car window, obtains a fine view of the valley of the river, stretching away with its dark serpentine belt of timber, and glimpses of the slow- moving, shining water. In the diluvial epoch, when the water spread all over the bottom, the river, lake-like in its expanse and slowness of current, nrast have presented a body of water larger than the Mississippi River even in its high stages of water.

The lower valley of the Big Bureau has also a narrow alluvial bottom, back a few miles from its confluence with the Illinois River. This bottom is narrow, crooked and covered with timber. The deposit is rich and marly, and when cultivated is very productive and inexhaustible.

The Illinois River bluffs show the loess in the deposits. At places these bluffs rise to a height of nearly one hundred and fifty feet. The exposures show alHO a marly, partially stratified clay and sand. Between

Bureau Junction and Peru there are several places where landslides have taken place, and the formation is more easily recognized. One of these is a marked feature in the landscape; at a distance it presents the appearance of a heavy outcrop of white sandstone. A closer view shows it to be a heavy bed of sliding, crawling sand. It is a white, yellow-banded sand, marly in its composition, and exhibits the most marked lines and bands of stratification. The outcrop is about thirty feet in thickness. It may be found in the bluff, near the railroad track, three miles east of Trenton. The caving sands have crawled down the hill almost to the railroad track.

The yellow and blue clays are found/ nearly all over the county in a thick deposit. The^ digging of the artesian well in Princeton, shows these to be seventy- nine feet thick, be^ fore the rock was reached. This first rock reached was only a thin bed, only three feet thick, and then was reached a hard-pan clay of a depth of 114 feet was passed through. The record of this well is very imperfect, and itls~ not at all certain that the thin rock passed was a regular stratified deposit It may have been a detached mass sticking in the drift, and therefore the real depth of these clays may be nearer 200 feet than seventy-nine feet

In many of the high prairie ridges are deposits of gravel, clean and finely assorted; the largest quantities so far found are between Tiskilwa and Sheffield, and along the railroad track northeast of Princeton. Detached boulders of red and black granite are found on the prairies.

ing to the geological map, the line commences at "appoint on the east line of the county, ten miles south of the northeast corner of the county, nearly due west of Homer station on the Illinois Central road; thence west, but bellying a little south, until it crosses the track of the C., B. & Q. road a little southwest of the village of Maldenj^then**. it bears off a little north of west until it intersects Green River at the northeast -corner of the township of Gold; then** down Green River to a point_gprt;h of Gejieaeo. All of__

Bureau south of this line is underlaid by lower coal measure deposits. This is about two-thirds of the county. As the county lies onThe northern limits of the coal-fields of the State, the deposits are somewhat irregular and detached. Sheffield mine is one of the oldest and most prosperous mining enterprises in the State. The mines at this place wereopened more than thirty years ago, about the time of the construction of the Chicago & Rock Island Railroad, and have always been an important coaling point on this line. The seam is reached by an inclined plane, carried down to the level of the coal, about forty feet below the level of the surface. This is the No. 6 seam, and is geologically identified with that at Kewanee. It has an average thickness of four and a half feet, and no trouble occurs from water. This deposit has been considered local and limited, but has been very productive, and presents uniformity and persistence. The main entries are now advanced to a great distance from the original dump, and, aside from local inequalities, the seam is continuously good.

A constant demand at this point for locomotive coal has led to comparatively uniform output for many years, and has gradually developed a permanent and prosperous community of miners, many of whom possess comfortable homes and surroundings. The average price of mining is $1 per ton, subject to such variations as the seasons may cause, or as sometimes affected by contracts agreed upon. Disaffection among the men is unusual, and few efforts at strikes have occurred in years.

Tjie next mine of importance is in the southeast corner of the county, near Peru. The formation here corresponds with that at Peru and La Salle. The shaft is about 300 feet deep. This vein is No. 2, and is about three feet thick, of superior quality. The Hollowayville Mine is 385 feet deep, to the same seam. In the southwest corner of the county, near Kewanee, is a shaft 186 feet deep, to the seam worked both at Kewanee and Sheffield. Outcrops of coal are also found in the ravines and along the bluffs of Bureau Creek, which have been the local source of supply to the village of Tiskilwa and the surrounding country for many years.

The most noticeable, however, of the mines in the county removed from railway connections, are those near Princeton , from which this town secures its supply chiefly. In this mine are found two seams, No. 7 being about two and a half feet thick, but of inferior quality; while the lower one is a bright, hard coal, four and a half to five feet thick, and about 150 feet below the surface. This is No. 6, the same as the seam at Sheffield. The mines in this locality are free from water, and the deposit is of considerable local extent, and the coal is sufficiently free from the sulphuret of iron to be used in the manufacture of gas at Princeton.

From this mention of the different coalseams and their outcrops, it will be seen the county is possessed of important mineral resources, which materially augment its manifold advantages of soil and climate. The output of coal for 1881, in spite of very unfavorable season, was 61,454 tons, of an average value of $2.03 per ton, at the mines, or a total value of $124,751. Of this amount about $75,000 were paid out in wages to about 225 men. The extent of the coal -deposits and their value in the county can only be approximated, owing to the irregularities peculiar to the strata on the outer edges of the coal-measures, but there is little doubt that coal will continue to be discovered, especially in the southwest part of the county, for years to come, at least as fast as the demands of the country require.

formations therefrom, and the soil, it is in the proper order that this chapter should conclude with that crowning work of the surface of our great and rich State - the prairies. Their history is now being, for the first time, investigated. Many years ago man looked upon their enchanting beauties, and speculated upon how they came to be. One of the earliest writers who referred to them at any length was Gov. Reynolds. The summing up of his conclusions was, they were increased and kept free from timber by the annual fires, and, he says, that the evidences of this are abundant in the fact that since the fires have been kept out and the tall prairie grasses have disappeared, the timber has encroached upon the prairie limits in each instance where it was not prevented by cultivation or otherwise. But we incline to the belief the Governor was mistaken in his facts ; that the instances where hazel and brier thickets, when not visited by fires, have eventually changed to timber growth, were in every case spots where the surroundings differed materially from the general prairie soil. More than thirty years ago Judge W. B. Scates wrote and delivered a lecture upon the subject. In 1856 Prof. Whitney, geologist of Iowa, and soon after Prof. Winchell, in Silliman's Journal, created a wide interest and drew much attention to the subject, by their investigations. A clear understanding of this subject is of vast importance to our large agricultural community, as indicating the best management and cultivation of the peculiar soil they present. The ablest thoughts, probably, on this subject, are well summarized by Prof. Leo Lesquereux, whose observations were published in Silliman's Journal, in 1857. Before summarizing what he has to say, it is proper to state that none of the given deductions are accepted as conclusive, and that some of them are ably disputed by eminent investigators.

Prof. Lesquereux believes that prairies are still in process of formation, going through the identical process that has formed substantially all prairies. These may be seen on the shores of Lake Michigan, Lake Erie and along the Mississippi and its affluents, especially the Minnesota River. The formations of those prairies differ from the primeval only in extent, and each bears a strong analogy to the peat bogs. Where the lake waves or currents strike the shore on the low grounds, and there heap materials - sand, pebbles, mud, etc., - they build up more or less elevated dams or islands, which soon become covered with trees. These dams are not always built along the shores ; they do not even always follow their outline, but often enclose wide shallow basins, whose waters are thus sheltered against any movement. Here the aquatic plants, sages, rushes, grasses, etc., soon appear, these basins become swamps, and, as can be seen near the borders of Lake Michigan, the waters may surround them, even when the swamps became drained by some natural or artificial cause. Along the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers the same phenomena is observable, with a difference only in the process of operation. In time of flood the heaviest particles of mud are deposited on both sides of the principal current along the line of slack water, and, by repeated deposits, dams are slowly formed and upraised above the general surface of the bottom land. Thus, after a time, of course, the water thrown on the bottoms by a flood is, at its subsidence, shut out from the river, and both sides of it are converted into swamps, sometimes of great extent. Seen from the high bluff' bordering its bottom land, the bed of the Minnesota River is in the spring marked for miles by two narrow strips of timbered land, bordering the true channel of the river, and emerging like fringes in the middle of a long, continuous narrow lake. In the summer and viewed from the same point, the same bottoms are transformed into a green plain, whose undulating surface looks like a field of green wheat, but forms, in truth, impassible swamps, covered with rushes, sedges, etc. By successive inundations and their deposits of mud, and by the heaping of the detritus of their luxuriant herbaceous vegetation, they become, by and by, raised up above the level of the river. They then dry up in the summer, mostly by infiltration and evaporation, and when out of reach of floods they become first wet and afterward dry prairies. The lowest part of these prairies is therefore along the bluffs. In that way were the high locations for river towns and farms built up along the shores. In that way were made the sites for Prairie du Chien, Prairie la Fourche, Prairie la Cross, etc. These patches of prairie, though of a far more recent origin than the immense plains above them, are, nevertheless, true prairies. Bordered on one side by the high, timbered banks of the bottoms, a fringe of trees separates them still from the actual bed of the river; nevertheless the trees do not invade them.

This peculiarity of formation explains, first, the peculiar nature of the soil of the prairies. It is neither peat nor humas, but a black, soft mold, impregnated with a large proportion of ulmic acid, produced by the slow decomposition, mostly under water, of aquatic plants, and thus partaking as much of the nature of the peat as that of the true humas. In all the depressions of the prairies, where water is permanent and unmixed with particles of mineral matter, the ground is true peat.

It is easy to understand why trees cannot grow on this kind of land. The germination of seeds of arborescent trees needs the free access of oxygen for their development, and the trees especially demand a solid point of attachment to fix themselves. Moreover, the acid of this kind of soil, by its particular antiseptic property, promotes the vegetation of a peculiar group of plants, mostly herbaceous. Of all our trees, the tamarac is the only species which, in our northern climate, can grow on peaty ground, and this, even, happens only under rare and favorable circumstances, that is, when stagnant water, remaining at a constant level, has been invaded by a kind of moss, the Sphagnum. By the power of absorption, their continuous growth and the rapid accumulation of their remains, these mosses slowly raise the surface of the bogs above water, and it is there, in this loose ground, constantly humid, but accessible to atmospheric action, that the tamarac appears.

An examination of the prairies, according to this idea of their formation, shows that from the first trace of their origin to their perfect completeness, there is nothing in their local or general appearance that is not explained by it, or does not agree with it.

The Bay of Sandusky is now in process of transformation to prairies, and is already sheltered against the violent action of the lake by a chain of low islands and sand banks, most of them covered for a long time with timber. All these islands are built up with the same kind of materials, shales, with lacustrine deposits, either moulded into low ridges under water, or brought up and heaved I by waves and currents. Around the bay, especially to the southwest, there are extensive plains, covered with shallow water.

In Western Minnesota especially, the process of prairie formation is plainly to be seen at this day. Here are various sized lakes, some small and circular - true ponds - others thirty or forty miles in circumference, and in this case shaping the outlines of their shores according to the undulations of the prairie, dividing into innumerable shallow branches, mere swamps covered with water plants, and emptying themselves from one to the other, passing thus by slow degrees toward the rivers, not by well marked channels, but by a succession of extensive swamps. These are the sloughs which separate the knolls of the prairies, or so to say, the low grounds of the rolling prairies. They are nearly dry in summer, but covered in the springtime by one to three feet of water. Their vegetation is merely sedges and coarse grasses. Wherever the borders of the lakes are well shaped, not confounded with or passing into swamps, they rise from five to six feet above the level of the water, and are timbered mostly with oak and hickory. This elevated margin is more generally marked on

From such facts the conclusion is drawn that all the prairies of the Mississippi Valley have been formed by the slow recess of sheets of water of various extent, first transformed into swamps, and eventually drained and dried. The high and rolling prairies, as well as those along the wide bottoms of the rivers, are all the result of the same course, and form an indivisible system.

The surface of the prairies is rolling and not continuously level as are the bottoms of swamps, because of the action of water, in the process of its natural drainage, as the waters in the arms of the lakes passed from one to the other. The bend of all our prairies 'is toward the rivers that furnish the drainage. The bottoms of the great lakes and oceans are marked by swells and depressions.

That the prairies have been originally covered with water to their highest points, is a fact well known to geologists, and proved by traces of submergence and deposits left along the course of our rivers to the highest point of their sources, in places at an altitude of 5,000 feet above the sea level. The Glacial epoch, followed by the oscillations of the earth's surface, - submergence and upheavals - the Champlain epoch, are still active, especially the latter, working in great activity upon our continent. The records of this movement are marked in denudations, deepening of channels, moulding of terraces along the lakes and rivers, and in the prairies formed - the prairies being the places covered by vast sheets of shallow water, during the process of slow emergence.

The growth of certain mosses under shallow, stagnant water in swamps and lagoons, forms in decomposition the peculiar clayey Bub-soil of our prairies, a tine, impalpable substance when not mixed with sand or other substances. In the lakes of the high prairies the phenomenon presents sometimes a peculiar character. At the depth of from one to three feet the mosses, Conferrea and Charas, form a thick carpet, which hardens, becomes consistent, like a kind of felt, and floating about six inches above the bottom, is often nearly strong enough to bear the weight of a man. This carpet is pierced with holes, where fishes pass to and fro; and the bottom under it is that fine, impalpable clay, evidently a residue of the decomposition of its plants. This never extends into deep water, and near the shore the carpet of mosses, etc., begin to be intermixed with some plants of sedges, which become more and more abundant in proportion as the depth decreases. -As soon as the blades of these plants reach above the water, they absorb and decompose carbonic acid, transform it into woody matter, under atmospheric influence, and then their detritus is, at first, clay mold, and then pure black mold, the upper soil of the prairies.

These are the leading principles which account for the presence of the prairies upon the American continent, around the lakes, and of the broad, flat bottoms of the southern rivers ; of the plattes of the Madeira River; of those of the Paraguay; of the pampas of Brazil, or the desert plains of the Salt Lake region; the low natural meadows of Holland, the heaths of Oldenburg, the plains on the shores of the North and the Baltic Seas and in Asia, and the steppes of the Caspian, are presented everywhere the same evidences, the same results of a general action, modified only by local causes.

Most of the roots of trees will perish when covered with clay impermeable to air, or underlaid by clay impermeable to water. Water standing constantly over the roots of trees kills them; even running water will kill trees when its movements are slow; and the bald cypress of the South or the tupelo will soon die if the water around them is protected from winds producing waves, or currents that carry always more or less air. De Candolle, in his Vegetable Physiology, holds that the constant irrigation necessary for the rice culture in Lombardy has a great inconvenience, because the water penetrates the ground of the neighboring properties, and kills the trees; that " water left stagnant for a time on the ground rots the trees at their column, prevents the access of oxygen to the roots, and kills the tree;" that "in the low grounds of Holland they dig, for planting trees, deep holes, and fill the bottom with bundles of bushes, as a kind of drainage for surplus water, as long as the tree is young enough to be killed by humidity;" that "the true swamps and marshes have no trees, and cannot have any, because stagnant water kills them."

But trees will grow on the prairie when planted. Would they grow, though, if planted without properly preparing the soil ? The clayey subsoil, when dug and mixed with the mold, forms a compound lighter than the clay, admitting air and giving the roots all nutritive elements. Did any instance ever occur of oaks growing in the prairies from acorns being scattered over the surface ?

The prairie soil, or humas, is generally much deeper than the soil in the timber, and, as said before, more peaty. It contains ulmic acid, as is shown by the slow decomposition of the sod when turned. It is this acid that makes what you will sometimes hear called a sour soil. Ulmie acid is a powerful preserver, an antiseptic, and it holds, therefore, longer than any other soil, all fertilizing elements mixed with it. Under the influence of stagnant water, and the remains of animals which have inhabited it while the soil was in process of formation, silica especially, with alumina, ammonia and other elements, have entered it in sufficient proportion, and caused its great and inexhaustible fertility, especially for grasses ; for by the impermeability of the under-clay the fertilizing elements havo been left in the soil. As natural meadows our prairies fed for centuries great herds of buffalo, deer, etc., which roamed over them, and now they will feed and fatten our herds of cattle for as long a time as we may want it, as well as indefinitely produce the wonderful crops of the cereals, etc., as great as the deep alluvial lands of the river bottoms. Even if by successive crops of the same kind, the upper soil should become somewhat deprived of its fertilizing elements, especially of the silica, lime and alumina, so necessary for the growth of corn, the subsoil is a mine that deep plowing will reach that will return the primitive wealth to the soil and restore the ancient bounteousness of the crops.

For the culture of trees these explanations of the prairies are equally useful. They tell the horticulturist that to plant fruit trees - a tree that never likes humidity - dig deep holes, pass through the clay to the drift and thus establish a natural drainage. Fill, then, the bottom of the hole with loose materials, pebbles, bushes, sod or mold, and then you will have the best ground that can be prepared for the health and long life of trees.

The prairies are sources of even greater wealth than are the immense coal-fields and their rich deposits, and like those sources of combustible materials, they point out the great future of the race of men which is called to inhabit them and profit by their rich stores ; while one of these formations is destined to furnish an immense population the elements of industrial greatness, the other is ready to provide it with both the essential elements of life - bread and meat. Hence the prairies have their place marked in the future history of mankind. They foretell, not of idle luxury and indolent ease, laziness and dissipation of life, but hard work, abundance, and the development of freedom and true manhood.