soils of the State. Large tracts of these excellent native soils are found in Jefferson, Belmont. Harrison, Monroe, Noble, Guernsey and Morgan counties. Wool of the finest staple in the country has long been produced on the hills of this general region.

Among the thinner and less productive soils which occupy but a small area are those derived from the Devonian shales. They are, however, well adapted to forest and fruit production. The chestnut and the chestnut oak. both valuable timber trees, are partial to them, and vineyards and orchards thrive well upon them. The north sides of the hills throughout this part of the State invariably show stronger soils than the southern sides, and a better class of forest growths. The locust, the walnut and hickory characterize the former.

The native soils of the Waverly group and of the Lower Coal Measures agree in general characters. They are especially adapted to forest growth, reaching the highest standard in the quality of the timber produced. When these lands are brought under the exhaustive tillage that has mainly prevailed in Ohio thus far, they do not hold out well, but the farmer who raises cattle and sheep, keeps to a rotation between grass and small grains, purchases a ton or two of artificial fertilizers each year, and does not neglect his orchard or small fruits, can do well upon them. The cheap lands of Ohio are found in this belt.

The other great division of the soils of Ohio, viz., the drift soils, are by far the most important, alike from their greater area and their intrinsic excellence. Formed by the commingling of the glacial waste of all the formations to the north of them, over which the ice has passed, they always possess considerabie variety of composition, but still in many cases they are strongly colored by the formation underneath them. Whenever a stratum of uniform composition has a broad outcrop acros the line of glacial advance, the drift beds that cover its southern portions will be found to have been derived in large part from the formation itself, and will thus resemble native or sedentary soils. Western Ohio is underlaid with Silurian limestones and the drift is consequently limestone drift. The soil is so thoroughly that of limestone land that tobacco, a crop which rarely leaves native limestone soils, at least in the Mississippi valley, is grown successfully in several counties of Western Ohio, 100 miles or more north of the terminal moraine.

The native forests of the drift regions were, without exception, hard wood forests, the leading species being oaks, maples, hickories, the walnut, beech and elm. The walnut, sugar-maple and white hickory and to quite an extent the burr oak, are limited to warm, well-drained land, and largely to limestone land. The upland clays have one characteristic and all important forest tree, viz., the white oak. It occupies vastly larger areas than any other single species. It stands or good land, though not the quickest or Most generous, but intelligent farming can

always be made successful on white-oak land. Under-draining is almost always in order, if not necessary, on this division of our soils.

The regions of sluggish drainage, already referred to, are occupied in their native state by the red-maple, the elm and by several varieties of oaks, among which the swamp Spanish oak is prominent. This noble forest growth of Ohio is rapidly disappearing. The vandal-like waste of earlier days is being checked to some degree, but there is still a large amount of timber, in the growth of which centuries have been consumed, annually lost.

It is doubtless true that a large proportion of the best lands of Ohio are too well adapted to tillage to justify their permanent occupation by forests, but there is another section, viz., the thin native soils of Southern Central Ohio, that are really answering the best purpose to which they can be put when covered with native forests. The interests of this part of the State would be greatly served if large areas could be permanently devoted to this use. The time will soon come in Ohio when forest planting will be begun, and here the beginnings will unquestionably be made.

The character of the land when its occupation by civilization was begun in the last century was easily read by the character of its forest growths. The judgments of the first explorers in regard to the several districts were right in every respect but one. They could not do full justice to the swampy regions of that early day, but their first and second class lands fall into the same classifications at the present time. In the interesting and instructive narrative of Col. James Smith's captivity among the Indians, we find excellent examples of this discriminating judgment in regard to the soils of Ohio as they appeared in 1755. The first class land of that narrative was the land occupied by the sugar-tree and walnut, and it holds exactly the same place to-day. The "second class land was the white-oak forests of our high-lying drift-covered districts. The "third class" lands were the elm and red maple swamps that occupied the divides between different river systems. By proper drainage, many of these last-named tracts have recently been turned into the garden soils of Ohio, but, for such a result, it was necessary to wait until a century of civilized occupation of the country had passed.

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These facts show in clear light that the character of the soil depends upon the geological and geographical conditions under which it exists and from which it has been derived.

ples of both currents. All other winds that blow here are tributary to one or other of these great movements. The return trades or southwest winds are cyclonic in their character; the northwest winds constitute the anti-cyclone. The former depress the mercury in the barometer and raise it in the thermometer; the latter reverse these results. The rains of the State are brought in by southwest winds; the few cases in which notable precipitation is derived from currents moving in any other direction than from the southwest really make no exception to the general statement, for in all such instances the rain falls in front of a cyclone which is advancing from the Gulf of Mexico. The protracted northeast storms that visit the State at long intervals and the short southeast storms that occur still less frequently are in all cases parts of greater cyclonic movements of the air that originate in the southwest and sweep out to the ocean over the intervening regions.

Between the average summer and winter temperatures of the State there is a difference of at least 40° Fahrenheit. A central east and west belt of the State is bounded by the isotherms of 51° and 52°, the average winter temperature being 30° and the average summer temperature being 73°. Southern Ohio has a mean annual temperature of 54° and Northern Ohio of 49°.

The annual range is not less than 100°; the maximum range is at least 130°; the extreme heat of summer reaching 100° in the shade, while the cold waves of winter sometimes depress the mercury to 30° below zero. Extreme changes are liable to occur in the course of a few hours, especially in winter when the return trades are overborne in a conflict, short, sharp and decisive, with the northwest currents. In such cases the temperature sometimes falls 60° in 24 hours, while changes of 20° or 30° in a day are not at all unusual.

The winters of Ohio are very changeable. Snow seldom remains thirty days at a time over the State, but an ice crop rarely fails in Northern Ohio, and not oftener than once in three or four years in other parts of the State. In the southern counties cattle, sheep and horses often thrive on pasture grounds through the entire winter.

In spite of these sudden and severe changes the climate of Ohio is proved by every test to be excellently adapted to both vegetable and animal life. In the case of man and of the domestic animals as well, it certainly favors symmetrical development and a high degree of vigor. There are for example no finer herds of neat stock or sheep than those which are reared here.

The forests of the State have been already described in brief terms. The cultivated products of Ohio include almost every crop that the latitude allows. In addition to maize, which nowhere displays more vigor or makes more generous returns, the smaller grains all attain a good degree of perfection. The ordinary fruits of orchard and garden are

produced in unmeasured abundance, being limited only or mainly by the insect enemies which we have allowed to despoil us of some of our most valued supplies. Melons of excellent quality are raised in almost every county of the State. The peach, alone of the fruits that are generally cultivated, is uncertain; there is rarely, however, a complete failure on the uplands of Southern Ohio.

The vast body of water in Lake Erie affects in a very favorable way the climate of the northern margin of the State. The belt immediately adjoining the lake is famous for the fruits that it produces. Extensive orchards and vineyards, planted along the shores and on the islands adjacent, have proved very successful. The Catawba wine here grown ranks first among the native wines of Eastern North America.

The rainfall of the State is generous and admirably distributed. There is not a month in the year in which an average of more than two inches is not due upon every acre of the surface of Ohio.

The average total precipitation of Southern Ohio is forty-six inches; of Northern Ohio, thirty-two inches; of a large belt in the centre of the State, occupying nearly onehalf of its entire surface, forty inches. The tables of distribution show ten to twelve inches in spring, ten to fourteen inches in summer, eight to ten inches in autumn and seven to ten inches in winter. The annual range of the rainfall is, however, considerable. In some years and in some districts there is, of course, an insufficient supply, and in some years again there is a troublesome excess, but disastrous droughts on the large scale are unknown, and disastrous floods have hitherto been rare. They are possible only in very small portions of the State in any case. There is reason to believe, however, that the disposal of the rainfall has been so affected by our past interference with the natural conditions that we must for the future yield to the great rivers larger flood plains than were found necessary in the first hundred years of our occupancy of their valleys. Such a partial relinquishment of what have hitherto been the most valuable lands of the State, not only for agriculture, but also for town sites and consequently for manufactures and commerce, will involve immense sacrifices, but it is hard to see how greater losses can be avoided without making quite radical changes in this matter.

In February, 1883, and again in February, 1884, the Ohio river attained a height unprecedented in its former recorded history. In the first year the water rose to a height of sixty-six feet four inches above the channelbar at Cincinnati, and in the latter to a height of seventy-one feet and three-fourths of an inch above the bar. The last rise was nearly seven feet in excess of the highest mark recorded previous to 1883. These great floods covered the sites of large and prosperous towns, swept away hundreds of dwellings, and inflicted deplorable losses on the residents of the great valley.

Are floods like these liable to recur at short intervals in the future? The conditions under which both occurred were unusual. Considerable bodies of snow lying on frozen ground were swept away by warm rains before the ground was thawed enough to absorb and store the water. These were the immediate causes of the disastrous overflows in both instances, and it may well be urged that just such conjunctures are scarcely likely to recur for scores of years to come. But it is still true that we have been busy for a hundred eas in cutting down forests, in draining swamps, in clearing and straightening the channels of minor streams, and finally, in underdraining our lands with thousands of miles of tile; in other words, in facilitating by every means in our power the prompt removal of storm-water from the land to the nearest water-courses. Each and all of these operations tend directly and powerfully to produce just such floods as have been described, and it cannot be otherwise than that under their combined operations our rivers will shrink during summer droughts to smaller and still smaller volumes, and, under falling rain and melting snow, will swell to more threatening floods than we have hitherto known. The changes that we have made and are still carrying forward in the disposal of storm-water renders this result inevitable, and to the new conditions we must adjust ourselves as best we can.

Another division of the same subject is the increasing contamination of our rivers in their low-water stages. This contamination results from the base use to which we put these streams, great and small, in making them the cole receptacle of all the sewage and manufacturing waste that are removed from cities

and towns. The amount of these impure additions is constantly increasing, the rate of increase being in fact much greater than the rate of growth of the towns. The necessity of removing these harmful products from the places where they take their origin is coming to be more generally recognized, and sewerage systems are being established in towns that have heretofore done without them. It thus happens that, as the amount of water in the rivers grows less during summer droughts from the causes already enumerated, the polluted additions to the water are growing not only relatively but absolutely larger. When, now, we consider that these same rivers are the main, if not the only, sources of water supply for the towns located in their valleys, the gravity of the situation becomes apparent. It is easy to see that the double duty which we have imposed upon the rivers of supplying us with water and of carrying away the hateful and dangerous products of waste, cannot long be maintained. There is no question, however, as to which function is to be made the permanent one. The rivers cannot possibly be replaced as sources of water-supply, while on the other hand, it is not only possible but abundantly practicable to filter and disinfect the sewage, and, as a result of such correction, to return only pure water to the rivers. During the first century of Ohio history not a single town has undertaken to meet this urgent demand of sanitary science, but the signs are multiplying that before the first quarter of the new century goes by the redemption of the rivers of Ohio from the pollution which the civilized occupation of the State has brought upon them and their restoration to their original purity. will be at least well begun.