Not long after we began to catch glimpses of the upland prairies. These are either clear prairies, totally destitute of trees, or oak openings which consist of clear prairie and scattered trees. A clear prairie--a broad unvaried expanse--presents rather a monotonous appearance like the sea, but surely the human eye has never rested on more lovely landscapes than these oak openings present. They answered my conceptions of lawns, parks and pleasure grounds in England; they are the lawns, parks and pleasure grounds of nature, laid out and planted with an inimitable grace, fresh as creation. In these charming woodlands are a number of small lakes, the most picturesque and delightful sheets of water imaginable. The prairies in the summer are covered with flowers. I am an indifferent botanist, but in a short walk I gathered twenty four species which I had not seen before. These flowers and woods and glittering lakes surpass all former conception of beauty. Each flower, leaf, and blade of grass, and green twig glistens with pendulous diamonds of dew. The sun pours his light upon the water and streams through the sloping glades. To a traveller unaccustomed to such scenes, they are pictures of a mimic paradise. Sometimes they stretch away far as the eye can reach, soft as Elysian meadows, then they swell and undulate, voluptuous as the warm billows of a southern sea. In these beautiful scenes we saw numerous flocks of wild turkies, and now and then a prairie hen, or a deer bounding away through flowers. Here too is found the prairie wolf which some take to be the Asiatic jackall. It is so small as not to be dangerous alone. It is said however, that they hunt in packs like hounds, headed by a grey wolf. Thus they pursue the deer with a cry {355} not unlike that of hounds, and have been known to rush by a farm-house in hot pursuit. The officers of the army stationed at the posts on the Prairies amuse themselves hunting these little wolves which in some parts are very numerous. C. C. RANDOM THOUGHTS. _The Age_.--Its leading fault, to which we of America are especially obnoxious, is this: in Poetry, in Legislation, in Eloquence, the best, the divinest even of all the arts, seems to be laid aside more and more, just in proportion as it every day grows of greater necessity. It is still, as in Swift's time, who complains as follows: "To say the truth, no part of knowledge seems to be in fewer hands, than that of discerning _when to have done_." _Dancing_.--The following are sufficiently amusing illustrations of the fine lines in Byron's Ode, "You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet; Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?"