BARREN AND EDNIONSON COUNTIES.



and the variety of industry it brings in its train, the industries
in wood are superior to all other forms of manufacturing.
  The scientific questions connected with our Western forests
are even as interesting as those of an economical nature.
While they must be reserved for special discussion in the
memoirs of the Survey, where, as matters of purely scientific
value, they will find their proper place, a brief statement of
some of the most important points may be admitted here. In
connection with the ancient barrens or prairies, which gave
their name, in itself a misnomer, to Barren county, one of the
most fertile regions in the State, we have two important ques-
tions: First, as to the origin of the treeless conditions which
prevailed there when our race first came into the region; and
secondly, how the retimbering was effected. The discussion
of the first of these questions will lead us far into the difficult
problems connected with the origin of prairies. I would only
suggest, that inasmuch as the forests came back on the stop-
page of the fires, to which reference is made in the following
report of Professor Hussey, it is not unreasonable to look to
for sweeping fires as the cause of the first destruction of the
timber. We have seen within a few years how forest fires,
once gaining headway in an unusually dried forest, may sweep
over hundreds of miles of territory. A practice of firing prai-
ries long continued might in time extend their limits from the
regions where they are natural, from the absence of sufficient
rainfall, over more and more of the forest area, until the prairie
area had been driven from the Upper Missouri into the central
regions of the Ohio Valley. This seems to me the most satis-
fItctory method of accounting for the change.
  The rapid restoration of the timber in Kentucky and parts
of Indiana and Ohio, while the prairies of Illinois show but
little tendency to restore their timber, is less easily to be ex-
l)lained. I am inclined, after considerable study of the matter,
to conclude that the " barrens " or prairies of Kentucky had not
been long stripped of their timbering, the period of open con-
tlitions having endured for such little time that the seeds of the
trees had not all decayed in the soil. In no other way could the
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