n these streams. In many instances are copses and
groves of timber, from one hundred to two thousand acres, in the midst
of prairies, like islands in the ocean. This is a common feature in the
country between the Sangamon river and lake Michigan, and in the
northern parts of the State. The lead mine region, both in this State
and the Wisconsin territory, abounds with these groves.

The _origin_ of these prairies has caused much speculation. We might as
well dispute about the origin of forests, upon the assumption that the
natural covering of the earth was grass. Probably one half of the
earth's surface, in a state of nature, was prairies or barrens. Much of
it, like our western prairies, was covered with a luxuriant coat of
grass and herbage. The _steppes_ of Tartary, the _pampas_ of South
America, the _savannas_ of the Southern, and the _prairies_ of the
Western States, designate similar tracts of country. Mesopotamia, Syria,
and Judea had their ancient prairies, on which the patriarchs fed their
flocks. Missionaries in Burmah, and travellers in the interior of
Africa, mention the same description of country. Where the tough sward
of the prairie is once formed, timber will not take root. Destroy this
by the plough, or by any other method, and it is soon converted into
forest land. There are large tracts of country in the older settlements,
where, thirty or forty years since, the farmers mowed their hay, that
are now covered with a forest of young timber of rapid growth.

The fire annually sweeps over the prairies, destroying the grass and
herbage, blackening the surface, and leaving a deposit of ashes to
enrich the soil.

4. _Barrens._ This term, in the western dialect, does not indicate _poor
land_, but a species of surface of a mixed character, uniting forest and
prairie.

The timber is generally scattering, of a rough and stunted appearance,
interspersed with patches of hazle and brushwood, and where the contest
between the fire and timber is kept up, each striving for the mastery.

In the early settlements of Kentucky, much of the country below and
south of Green river presented a dwarfish and stunted growth of timber,
scattered over the surface, or collected in clumps, with hazle and
shrubbery intermixed. This appearance led the first explorers to the
inference that the soil itself must necessarily be poor, to produce so
scanty a growth of timber, and they gave the name of _barrens_ to the
whole tract of coun