Alpena argus. [volume] (Alpena, Mich.) 1893-1909, 1893-03-01
Why are the Prairies Treeless7

III Is puzzle Wnlch mas exercised
many minds. : The question has
been hotly debated in America,
where the origon of the prairies
themselves has been gravely and
conflicting ascribed to fire and to
water, to heet and to cold; while
the forests which once clothed these
regions are with equal con-
tradiction, held to have been parch-
ed by drought, drowned to death by
lakes, smothered by the fineness of
their soil, or crushed by the action
OF an age of ice.
The curious points thus raised
have not been much noticed OH the
other side of the Atlantic until last
autumn, when quite quantity of
interesting and original information
has been put together by a we'll
known naturalist, Mr.. Miller Chris
ty, f. L. S., in Il paper read before
the British Association at Cardiff.
He gives his impressions derived
from repeated visits to those parts.
Close personal observation and
facts gathered on the spot, have
convinced him that the remarkable
absence of trees on vast tracts of
level land, where grasses flourish,
and all sorts of flowers abound,
where the soil is most fertile, and
rainfall sufficient, and the climate
favorable, can only be due to the
persistent and unsparing force of
fire.
This is no new idea. We have
long been familiar, as he reminds
us, with thrilling tales of hunters
who, with ready resource, fight fire
with fire, and thus surround them
selves with belt of ground where
no flames can feed.
Nowadays such conhagrations are
commonly caused by travellers who
neglect to extinguish their camp
fires, or by persons who start them
in mischief or malace, or by settlers
who seek thus to improve their pas
turage, or to lessen the mosquito
plague.
SO it happens that almost the
whole expanse of prairieland is
annually scorched until no green
thing remains, and coated with a
fresh layer of black ashes, through
which the grasses and herbaceous
plants thrust themselves in the fol-
lowing season with vigorous growth.
Some of these fires are OIL so
small "A scale, and creep along 50
quietly, that they would die out on
reaching the wheel track of a wagon
Oh the short grass, or shoulder as
gradually as an English railway
bank in summer time; but large
prairie fire at night is an alarming
sight.
i There is further proof of the fire.
quency of these prairie fires in the
fact that no animals are to be- found
except an occasional hare, or pre-.
haps a coyote, or prairie wolf, and
some few that burrow and so are
safe; and that even earthworms
which, according to Darwin, are
found in all parts Of the world, ar,
absent here, because no decaying
vegetable matter remains to form
their food.
The continual cultivation whicl
other soils receive from the actor
; of their worms that stir and NOV,
them, is thus denied to the prairies
but a natural compensation is givel
in the liberal coating of manur
. which is formed by the ashes of TIN
, grass.
In support to the fire theory w
i may also notice that there is n
q lack of trees in parts that are wei
= protected, Poplars and willow
. spring up readily on all sides, an
= if not hindered, would certainly re
n produce in due time the banishe