As we journeyed onward, we found the soil ever the same, in depth and strength equal to an Illinois prairie. The old cretaceous ocean, and the great lakes, certainly left it rich in deposits. When its surface shall have been broken by the plow, and the water-fall absorbed instead of shed off, the plains will resemble, in appearance and products, any other prairie country. The amount of moisture annually passing over them, in storm-clouds that burst further east, is abundantly sufficient to make the tract very fertile. It is a well established fact in relation to climatic influences, that moisture attracts moisture; and in this region the dry ground, with its few shallow streams, has now no claim upon the summer clouds. The tough buffalo grass has put a lock-jaw on the plain. It can drink nothing from the floods of the rainy season. But pry open the hungry mouth with the plowshare, and the earth will drink greedily. The moisture then absorbed, given up through the agency of capillary attraction, will draw the showers of summer, as they are passing over. Already a marked change has taken place over a portion of the plains, and crops have been grown as far west as Fort Wallace. The subject of spontaneous generation, I may remark in this connection, became a very interesting one to our party. Wherever the soil has been disturbed, wild sun-flowers spring suddenly into existence. The "grading camps" of the railroads were followed by belts of these self-asserting annuals. The first garden-patch cultivated at Fort Wallace had weeds and insects similar to those that infest gardens elsewhere. In some cases hundreds of miles of barren plain intervened between the spots where the seeds germinated, and the nearest points where other plants of the same variety grew. Neither birds or wind could have carried the seeds in such quantities. Is the theory true that germs fall down to us from other planets? Or, do not the plains offer a strong argument on behalf of spontaneous generation?