reclamation of the Indians, and, connected with this, the collection and dissemination of information respecting their language, history, traditions, customs, and character; their numbers and condition; the geological features of their country, and its natural history and productions. It also proposed some definite means of action for furthering the moral instruction of the Indians, and for helping the missionaries in all work for their benefit. As president of this society, Mr. Schoolcraft was asked to lecture on the grammatical construction of the Algonquin languages as spoken by the Northwestern tribes, and to procure a lexicon of it; also to deliver a poem on the Indian character at the annual meeting of 1833. Other literary efforts of this period were, an address before the Historical Society of Michigan in 1830, and an address, in 1831, before the Detroit Lyceum, on the natural history of the Territory. In the summer of 1832 Mr. Schoolcraft, under a commission from the Government, organized and commanded an expedition to the country upon the sources of the Mississippi River. The primary object of the expedition was to extend to the Indians living north of St. Anthony's Falls the measures previously taken with those south of that point, to effect a pacification; also, to endeavor to ascertain the actual source of the river. He ascended the St. Louis from Lake Superior to Sandy Lake summit, and passed thence direct to the Mississippi six degrees below the central island in Cass Lake, which was till then the ultimate point of geographical discovery. Thence he went up the river and its lakes, avoiding too long circuits of the stream by portages, to the junction of the two branches, where by the advice of his Indian guide he took the left-hand, or Plantagenian branch, to Lake Assawa, its source. Thence he went by portage, a distance of "twelve resting-places," to Itasca Lake, which he struck within a mile of its southern extremity. The lake was judged to be about seven miles in length, by one or two broad; "a bay, near its eastern end, gave it somewhat the shape of the letter y." The discoverer returned, through the stream and its lakes, to St. Peter's. The narrative of this expedition was published in 1834; and was republished, with the account of the expedition of 1820, in 1853, under the title, Narrative of an Exploratory Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi River in 1820, completed by the Discovery of its Origin in Itasca Lake in 1832. The whole of Mr. Schoolcraft's earlier life and work up to this time is recorded, mostly from day to day, in his Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers, etc., 1812 to 1842, a book having "the flavor of the time, with its motley incident on the frontier, with Indian chiefs, trappers, government employés, chance travelers, rising legislators, farmers, ministers of the gospel, all standing out with more or less of indi viduality in the formative period of the country." This book abounds with evidence of Mr. Schoolcraft's scientific and literary activity, as well as of his efficiency in work in whatever field. As early as 1820 we find a letter from Amos Eaton, asking him for information for the second edition of his Index to Geology, respecting the secondary and alluvial formations and the strata of the Rocky Mountains. Dr. Samuel Mitchell writes him, in 1821, about the shells and other specimens he has sent, including a “sandy fungus," and inviting specimens for the cabinet of the Emperor of Austria. Profs. Silliman and Hall acknowledge the value of his examination of the mining regions of Missouri; Prof. Silliman asks for articles for his journal; and Sir Humphry Davy thinks his book would sell well in England. Prof. Cleaveland writes him, in 1827, that he is about preparing a new edition of his work on mineralogy, and solicits the communication of new localities. In the same year Mr. Schoolcraft himself writes that the collection he made in Missouri, etc., in 1819, appears to have had an effect on the prevalent taste for those subjects, "and at least it has fixed the eyes of naturalists on my position on the frontiers." Mr. Peter S. Duponceau addresses him, in 1834, on the structure of the Indian languages, "in terms which are very complimentary, coming, as they do, as a voluntary tribute from a person whom I never saw, and who has taken the lead in investigations on this abstruse topic in America." He pronounces Mr. Schoolcraft's book on the Chippewa languages one of the most philosophical works on the Indian languages which he has ever read. In another letter Mr. Duponceau acknowledges having used Mr. Schoolcraft's grammar, giving due credit, in preparing a prize essay for the Institute of France, on the grammatical structure of Indian languages. Dr. Thomas H. Webb, of Providence, in 1835, notifies him of his election as an honorary member of the Rhode Island Historical Society, and asks about aboriginal inscriptions on rocks. The Massachusetts Historical Society, in 1836, asks him to proceed with his work on the Ojibway language, complete it, and let the society publish it. John J. Audubon asks for aid in preparing his work on American quadrupeds. There are numerous notices of specimens that have been sent to Mr. Schoolcraft to pass upon, and solicitations from persons representing the principal magazines, to contribute of the results of his researches. A new disposition of official posts having been made, Mr. Schoolcraft transferred his residence in 1837 to Michilimackinac or Mackinaw. Thence he removed, in 1841, to New York, where he expected to find the surroundings more favorable to the collation and publication of the results of his observations on the red race, whom he "had found in many traits a subject of deep interest; in some things wholly misunderstood and misrepresented; and altogether an object of the highest humanitarian interest." But the publishers were not yet prepared in their views to undertake anything corresponding to his ideas. In the next year he carried out a long-deferred purpose of visiting England and continental Europe, attending the British Association at Manchester. On his return he made a tour through western Virginia, Ohio, and Canada. In 1875 he was appointed by the Legislature of New York as a commissioner to take the census of the Indians of the State, and collect information concerning the Six Nations. The results of this investigation were embodied in his Notes on the Iroquois, a second enlarged edition of which was published in 1847. The latter part of his life was spent in the preparation-under an act passed by Congress in 1847-of an elaborate work on all the Indian tribes of the country, based upon information obtained through the reports of the Indian Bureau. This work-which was published in six quarto volumes-is described in Duyckink's Cyclopædia of American Literature as cov ering a wide range of subjects in the general history of the race; their traditions and associations with the whites; their special antiquities in the several departments of archæology in relation to the arts; their government, manners, and customs; their physiological and ethnological peculiarities as individuals and nations; their intellectual and moral cultivation; their statistics of population; and their geographical position, past and present. Mr. Schoolcraft became interested in religion at an early period in his career, and his journals show him ever more earnestly co-operating in local religious movements; furthering the progress of missionary effort among the Indians, by whatever denomination; laboring for the promotion of temperance among them; and taking the lead in whatever might contribute to their well-being or to the repression of wrong against them. His literary activity was prolific, and appears to have been nearly evenly divided between poetry, Indian lore and ethnology, and the objects of his explorations and scientific investigation. Besides books of poems and the narratives already named, he published Algic Researches, a collection of Indian allegories and legends (1839); Oneota, or the Characteristics of the Red Race in America (1844-45), republished in 1848 as The Indian and his Wigwam; Report on Aboriginal Names and the Geographical Terminology of New York (1845); Plan for investigating American Ethnology (1846); The Red Race of America (1847); A Bibliography of the Indian Tongues of the United States (1849); and American Indians, their History, Condition, and Prospects (1850). He received the degree of LL. D. from the University of Geneva in 1846; and was a member of many learned societies. CORRESPONDENCE. AGRICULTURE ON THE PLAINS. Editor Popular Science Monthly: I Science bronthly was published an ultithe February number of The Popular cle, by Stuart O. Henry, entitled Rainfall on the Plains. Mr. Henry claims that the rainfall on our plains has not increased to any appreciable extent since the first settlement; and he says that the general impression that settlement and cultivation traveling westward have been attended by a gradual increase of rainfalls is a "remarkable fallacy." He concludes that agricultural operations can never be successfully carried on west of a line about the ninety-eighth meridian, and that attempts to utilize the regions named for purely agricultural purposes, without artificial irrigation, will only result in calamitous failure. Mr. Henry makes the statement that "the reports of the Kansas and Nebraska Boards of Agriculture will show that, in the territory lying west of the ninety-eighth meridian in those States, the acreage of land actually under cultivation, when compared with the whole area of that territory, is almost insignificant." After seventeen years of residence in southwestern Nebraska, near the one hundredth meridian, I am convinced that Mr. Henry is correct as to the absence of an increase of rainfall; but his conclusions are very erroneous, and must have been formed without information as to the great growth in wealth and population in the region west of the ninetyeighth meridian during the last ten years. The statement that the cultivated land west of the ninety-eighth meridian in Kansas and Nebraska is insignificant when compared with the whole area of that territory may have been true ten years ago, but at the present time it is far from the truth. The writer believes that no increase of rainfall has ever been necessary to fit the country named for profitable farming, but that the rainfall has always been sufficient, and that the obstacles to farming that have existed resulted from the newness of the country, rather than from lack of rain, and that these obstacles are gradually disappearing as the country settles up, and will wholly disappear when the country becomes as densely settled as are the States of Iowa and Illinois. Mr. Henry's gloomy statements seem like an echo of predictions made by sundry scientific gentlemen twenty years ago concerning the plains of Kansas and Nebraska; and he might be aptly compared to a modern Rip Van Winkle, who has just awakened after a twenty years' sleep, ignorant of the wonderful growth that the country west of the ninetyeighth meridian has made. When he penned the lines quoted, was he aware that Jewell County, Kansas, which lies west of the ninetyeighth meridian, is the champion corn-producing county in the Union? Was he aware that nearly one half of the wealth and population of the State of Nebraska is to be found west of the ninety-eighth meridian ? The report of the Nebraska Board of Agriculture for the year 1889 has not been issued, in Nebraska in 1888 were not as good as in but we have the report for 1888. The crops 1889, nor was there as much ground in cultivation. I give below some statistics taken from the report for 1888 making a comparative statement of the amount of wheat, corn, and potatoes raised east of the ninety-eighth meridian and west of that meridian in the State of Nebraska. It will be admitted by all that wheat, corn, and potatoes require as much moisture as do any farm products. It must be borne in mind that many of the western counties are very new and their capabilities not developed; but enough is shown to completely disprove Mr. Henry's statements. In the counties of Nebraska that lie west of the ninety-eighth meridian there were raised in 1888 of corn, wheat, and potatoes: Corn.... 52,847,469 bushels Wheat.... 7,088,688 Potatoes.. 8,626,145 46 It will thus be seen that the counties west of the ninety-eighth meridian produced about thirty-six per cent of all the corn, about sixty per cent of all the wheat, and about seventy-six per cent of all the potatoes that were raised in 1888 in Nebraska, and as a matter of fact a good portion was raised west of the one hundredth meridian. Reference to the same report shows that in 1888 there were 2,611,337 acres of improved land in the Nebraska counties lying west of clearly demonstrate that the improvements the ninety-eighth meridian. These statistics and, could the statistics for 1889 be had, we there made are far from "insignificant," would, without doubt, have a still more encouraging showing. A. E. HARVEY. ORLEANS, NEBRASKA, March 26, 1890. those for which commitments are increasing, are crimes of intemperance; so Mr. Torrey makes a second division of crimes, separating those of intemperance from all other crimes. The returns to the State permit of this division for a longer period: YEAR. were the fewest illiterates as compared with 1850. 1855. 1860. 1865 1875 1880 This division shows that the total increase in all crimes other than intemperance, taken together, has been only fifty per cent (population not considered), but that commitments for intemperance have increased nearly five hundred per cent. The commitments which were not for intemperance are compared with the population of the State with the fol In the January Lend a Hand, Mr. David C. Torrey carefully discussed the records of crime in Massachusetts, which was one of the States where Mr. Reece found his high-lowing results: In 1850, 1 commitment to 188 inest per cent of criminals, and some of his results seem worthy of quoting, as throwing much light on this subject: From 1850 to 1885 the total commitments increased from 8,761 to 26,651; in the first-mentioned year, 1 to 118 inhabitants: in the second, 1 to 72 inhabitants. It is found, however, on investigation, that the increase is almost entirely confined to crimes against public order and decency, while the commitments for the more serious crimes against persons and property have not even kept pace with the growth of population. The following statistics for the years since 1865 in which a census has been taken proves this statement. This division by crimes was first made in the returns to the State in 1865, and was not made in 1875: habitants; in 1855, 1 to 144; in 1860, 1 to 147: in tics: in 1880, 1 to 280; in 1885, 1 to 244. From 1850 1865, 1 to 225; in 1870, 1 to 201; in 1875, no statis to 1865 the average commitments for crimes other than intemperance were 1 to 174 inhabitants, while from 1870 to 1885 it was 1 to 241 inhabitants. Thus a decrease of thirty-eight per cent is shown in all crimes other than intemperance during a period of seventeen years. The question of crime in Massachusetts thus resolves itself into a question of intemperance, pure and simple for it is owing to intemperance alone that there is an increase of commitments. Mr. Torrey proceeds to show that the increasing commitments for intemperance do not necessarily prove an increase of intemperance. The public has a different opinion of the crime of intemperance from what it has of other crimes. The commitments for more serious crimes could not increase without an increase of those crimes; but, because so few of the men who drink to excess are committed, there is abundant opportunity for an increase in commitments for intemperance without an actual increase of intemperance. In thirty-five years public sentiment has been aroused against intemperance, and the increased commitments caused by this sentiment and the changes in law which it has brought about are the inadequate grounds which warrant claims that crime is increasing in Massachusetts. The State seems still to have encouragement to continue its schools and its reformatories and its churches, with faith that it can not only take care of the children born to it, but also that it can assimilate to its social order those which it is forced to adopt.-Boston Post. H. HELM CLAYTON, IN EDITOR'S TABLE. PRACTICAL ECONOMICS. "N last month's Table we had a few words upon the discredit into which what is sometimes called the "orthodox" political economy has fallen among practical men. It is a pleasure to be able to call attention to a book which furnishes a signal example of the way in which economical studies should be pursued. We refer to the volume brought out a few months ago by Mr. D. A. Wells, under the title of Recent Economic Changes. Mr. Wells is not a dogmatist, though it is evident he has sufficiently definite opinions of his own. He conceives it to be his main business to marshal the facts that seem to him capable of explaining the present material condition of society, and of indicating the course that things are likely |