ally covered with a great
pampas of blue-stem, high as a horse's head, interspersed here and there
with swamps of willows and bull grass, while only narrow fringes of
timber along the creeks, and some five or six groves of timber and
woodland, widely scattered, served as land marks to the early traveler.

Those who early observed and explored the grassy savannas of Indiana and
Illinois, always maintained that they were kept denuded of trees and
forests by the action of the great prairie fires. Among those who have
supported this theory are the Hon. James Hall, author of "The West,"
published in Cincinnati in 1848; the Hon. John Reynolds, former governor
of the state of Illinois, and the Hon. John D. Caton, a late judge of
the Supreme Court of Illinois. Caton's observations on this subject are
so interesting and ingenious that we cannot refrain from making the
following quotation:

"The cause of the absence of trees on the upland prairies is the problem
most important to the agricultural interests of our state, and it is the
inquiry which alone I propose to consider, but cannot resist the remark
that wherever we do find timber throughout the broad field of prairie,
it is always in or near the humid portions of it, as along the margins
of streams, or upon or near the springy uplands. Many most luxurious
growths are found in the highest portions of the uplands, but always in
the neighborhood of water. For a remarkable example, I may refer to the
great chain of groves extending from and including the Au Sable grove on
the east and Holderman's grove on the west, in Kendall county, occupying
the high divide between the waters of the Illinois and the Fox rivers.
In and around all the groves flowing springs abound, and some of them
are separated by marshes, to the borders of which the great trees
approach, as if the forests were ready to seize upon each yard of ground
as soon as it is elevated above the swamps. Indeed, all our groves seem
to be located where the water is so disposed as to protect them, to a
greater or less extent, from the prairie fire, although not so situated
as to irrigate them. If the head waters of the streams on the prairies
are most frequently without timber, as soon as they have attained
sufficient volume to impede the progress of fires, with very few
exceptions, we find forests on their borders, becoming broader and more
vigorous as the magnitude of the streams increase. It is manifest that
the lands