CLINIATE. The climate is continental, dry, and exhilarating. The mean temperature for Jan uary is 19.7' and for July 74.8-. The extremes are very the mercury sometime, to 42' and at times to 114°. The are cool. The climate of the western third of the Mate is. NINVI'Vel% arid. and differs consid. orally from that of the eastern third, where culture is wholly successful. The annual rainfall is 23 inches, but this is very unevenly distributed. In the east it is sufficient to support from 30 inches on the to a maximum as as 30 inches. western halt it is below 20, and in the extreme west as low inches, so that here cannot be 1.)111T11-ii Dll The amount of rain falls in and June, and more than three-loorths of the animal rain fall- the six months of the sea son. April to September. The winds are from the northwest. and these It taper the ',Intoner heat, hot occasionally the heat is by the hot wi.Als from the \lore than half of the State is covered with drift and guess, tile drift Von 1.1 Ill). 1.a-tern ....lollies. The lots forms a soil of inexhaustible fertility. Its depie.its in thickness from .1 to 1311 and even DID feet, and soft and easily excavated, it is very com paet and able to withstand moisture and ex p. sure. The bluffs the bottom-lands are composed of this material. The alluvial lands of 1114. river valleys also afford excellent soil, scarcely the loess in and as the State was anciently a lacustrine bed, and later a of peat areas are covered with a very black mold which in some places becomes true peat, and which has the dark color to the rivers, whence the popular name of the State is derived. C(nisid erable areas in the west, as much as 20.000 miles. are covered with sand dunes. These are found partly in the southwestern eorner. but chiefly in the and arid area north of the Platte and west of the 100th meridian. In the extreme west the Tertiary marls. even in the Bad Lands, can he made productive by For Flora and Farm, see the article,: ROCKY AlOCNTAINS and UNITED STATES.
l;EOLO?Il* AND INER.1LS. Except in the Ilad Lands of the northwest and in some other iso lated localities. formations older than the Pleisto cene are nowhere exposed. They are composed of nearly horizontal strata below the drift in wide bands southwest to north east. Four principal formations are represented, which in order from southeast to northwest are the Upper Carboniferous. l'ennian, Cretaceous, and the and Pliocene Tertiary. The .\lio cene the one which crops out in the Bad Lands, ftlacial drift covers the eastern third of the State, the Pleistocene formation con of alluvial deposits laid down in the lakes which were formed at the (dose of the period. Clay and a little stone
are the only important minerals. The clay de posits afford material for the produetion of brick and tile; the product for 1900 was valued at $:4?83,93!.4, three times the value of the product in 1893.
.luitiut-I.TrItE. In development the State advanced rapidly the last three devades, of the nineteenth century, and at the 41141 of the period ranked as one of the most important States. In 1900, 00.8 per ecru. if the total land area was in cluded in farms, and of this 61.0 per cent.
was improx ed. Efforts at in the arid areas of the west have been attended with some sueees., the irrigated reported in 159!) being I Ist,3:04, of which about 90 per cent. was watered from the North Platte Inver. In sumo there are supplies of water, 111) utilized by means of windmill- and .mall reservoirs--a sys tem which VE))1111.4•5 to be of S011ie hill/14'0MT in thg agricultural devclupmont 14 the arid Since 1880 the of farms increased from 150.9 acres to 210.1 acres. This is doe to the establishment of extensive live.stock ranches in the western part of the state and the unit ion of areas. and is in spite of the tendeney. to divide farts which has ellaracterized the same period in the eastern part of the Stale. The num ber of tenant-operated farms is very rapidly, and annainted in 1900 to 30.9 per cent. of the total number of fanny:.
Corn is the crop, nearly one-half of the eullivalcd of the State devoted to it. In 1880 the of wheat was only ly less than that of corn. but in the decade there was an actual decrease of more than two fifths ill the arca devoted to it. \xrhlCiu, 110W ever, revived in the last decade of the century, amounting, in 1900 to three times that of 1890. There were large inereases in the area devoted to oats and rye respectively during each of the last two decades of the nineteenth century; rye, however, is of only minor importance. t?rasses cut for hay are chiefly wild, salt. or prairie grasses, but millet, alfalfa, and other cultivated grasses are also grown. Potatoes and other vegetable crops are extensively grown. In the last decade of the past century a rapid in crease was made in the cultivation of sugar beets, the census of 1900 reporting a total of 5662 acres devoted to them. The of orchard fruits is mainly confined to the southeastern part of the State. Between 1890 and 1900 the number of fruit trees increased from 1,840.704 to 6.340, 118. considerably over half of this number being apple trees.
The acreage of the principal farm crops for the census years indicated is as follows: