"Facts such as these," continues the same writer, "seem to sustain the popular persuasion that a _climatic change_ is taking place, promoted by the spread of settlements westwardly, breaking up portions of the prairie soil, covering the earth with plants that shade the ground more than the short grasses; thus checking or modifying the reflection of heat from the earth's surface, etc. The fact is also noted that even where the prairie soil is not disturbed, the short buffalo grass disappears as the 'frontier' extends westward, and its place is taken by grasses and other herbage of taller growth. That this change of the clothing of the plains, if sufficiently extensive, might have a modifying influence on the climate, I do not doubt; but whether the change has been already spread over a large enough area, and whether our apparently or really wetter seasons may not be part of a cycle, are unsettled questions. "The civil engineers of the railways believe that the rains and humidity of the plains have increased during the extension of railroads and telegraphs across them. If this is the case, it may be that the mysterious electrical influence in which they seem to have faith, but do not profess to explain, has exercised a beneficial influence. What effect, if any, the digging and grading, the iron rails, the tension of steam in locomotives, the friction of metallic surfaces, the poles and wires, the action of batteries, etc., could possibly or probably have on the electrical conditions, as connected with the phenomena of precipitation, I do not, of course, undertake to say. It may be that wet seasons have merely happened to coincide with railroads and telegraphs. It is to be observed that the poles of the telegraph are quite frequently destroyed by lightning; and it is probable that the lightning thus strikes in many places where before the erection of the telegraph it was not apt to strike, and perhaps would not reach the earth at all.