The tabulation given in Appendix II illustrates the economic progress of three Minnesota counties in which the Norse factor has been strong from the early days of their settlement: Fillmore, Chisago, and Otter Tail, one of the newer counties in the west-central part of the State. From these figures some conception of the influence of the North European in one American commonwealth may be obtained. These are not unique cases, but rather they are what might be called normal counties of their class, counties whose population is made up more or less of good native-born settlers from the older Eastern States. Several processes already discussed will be easily and forcibly illustrated by these tables. In Fillmore County, for example, the oldest of the three, the increase of the foreign-born element was most rapid in the decade 1870-1880, while during the next ten years there was a distinct falling off, due beyond any doubt to the rise in the price of lands in that county and to the opening up of new counties like Otter Tail where just as good land was to be had at the minimum rate. This falling off was paralleled in the same decade in Chisago County, while both the rise and decline in the number of foreign-born Norwegians going into Otter Tail County occur in the two later decades, 1880-1890 and 1890-1900, when the Dakotas were filling up. The continuing additions to the acreage of farm lands and the steady transformation of unimproved areas into improved areas, indicate the extent to which the labor of alien hands was enhancing the value of the prairies even down to 1900, and presumably since that date. The figures for the increase of the cash values of the farms, including fences, etc., but not improvements, have been chosen because the increases in the total valuations of counties is not infrequently due to the rise of considerable villages and cities, and to the building of railroads, and to these enterprises in contrast with the evolution of agricultural values, the Scandinavian is a comparatively insignificant contributor. The extent to which this development of rural areas may go, is curiously evidenced in the names of the subdivisions of the relatively new Otter Tail County. Of its sixty-two townships in 1900, not less than thirteen bear unmistakable Scandinavian (Norwegian) names--Aastad, Aurdal, Norwegian Grove, St. Olaf, Tordenskjold, Throndhjem, etc.