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   Oconomowoc last year, effectually exploded the
   notion that timber had very much to do with
   the abundance of rainfall and asserted that our,
   rains come almost exclusively from the Gulf of
   Mexico. Thus we arm compelled to seek out
( another theory for this summer climatic differ-
   ence. It may be that it is on account of Its
   peculiar triangular position between the two
   grMet lakes, so that when the wind prevails from
   the southwest, driving the air in between rising
   cooler currents from Lakes Superior and Mich-
   igan, a condensation of moisture is affected and
   rain the consequence.
      ,This theory seems to me plausible, but ear-
   tain it is that during the growing season there is
   more even rainfall in northern Wisconsin than
   there is in southern Wisconsin. This, together
   with the great depth of soil, accounts abundant-
   ly for the greater growth of vegetation through-
   out this section.
                -InCeaje in Populaton.
       While some portions of northern- Wisconsin
   have been settled pretty nearly as long as the
   southern part of the state, the great clay loam
   domain, however, has been too little occupied
   *until within a recent period. The surplus popu-
   lation of twenty and twenty-five years ago was
   altogether, too prone to go to the western prairie
   country. The northern part of the state thus
   lost a class of people that it would have been
   very desirable to have had and whose condition
   would have undoubtedly been very much better
   had they stayed in the state rather than to have
   gone to the treeless, windswept prairies beyond
   the Mississippi. The people who settled upon
   the hardwood timber sections of northern Wis-
                         !1*