THE SEASON OF THE YEAR. 233 



and winter in temperate climate produce other changes of other 

 sorts in the tropical region. The temperature, it is true, remains 

 the same, or approximately the same; but the meteorological con- 

 ditions vary. Even with ourselves, summer is not only hotter but 

 also drier than winter; winter is marked by rain and snow as well 

 as by lowered temperature. In the tropics, on the other hand, it is 

 rather the summer or summers that are wet, for there is a certain 

 moving zone of equatorial calms in which it practically keeps on 

 raining always. But this zone is not fixed; it flits with the sun. 

 When the sun goes northward for the northern summer the rainy 

 zone goes with him; when he turns southward again the zone shifts 

 after him. Thus places on or near the two tropics have one rainy 

 season a year, while places on the equator have usually two. The 

 intervening dry seasons are often very dry and parched, indeed ; and 

 where this is markedly the case, the rainy season acts just as spring 

 does in the north, or as the inundation does in Egypt; it is the be- 

 ginning of vegetation. The plants that were dry and dormant dur- 

 ing the arid months wake up into fresh life; the branches put forth 

 new leaves; the brown seeds germinate; the flowers appear; and in 

 due time the fruit ripens. Everything in these cases depends upon 

 the recurrence of the rainy season, just as everything in India de- 

 pends upon the bursting of the monsoons, and everything in Egypt 

 on the rising of the Nile. I have seen a dry plain in Jamaica bare 

 and brown one day, and covered six or eight inches high with fresh 

 green waving guinea-grass the day but one after. The rains had 

 came meanwhile, and Nature had awaked with more than springlike 

 awakening. In those hot climates everything grows by magic as soon 

 as it gets the needed water. 



Indeed, we may say that in half the world the seasons, organic- 

 ally speaking — I mean, the seasons of plant and animal life — de- 

 pend upon heat and cold, summer and winter, snow or sunshine ; but 

 in the other half they depend almost entirely upon drought and rain- 

 fall. Even as near home and as far north as Algeria, the summer is 

 far too dry and dusty for agriculture; the autumn rains set in about 

 October or November; they are immediately followed by the plow- 

 ing; and the winter becomes for .most purposes the practical sum- 

 mer. Eruits and vegetables are at their best in January and Febru- 

 ary; the fields are full of flowers up to March or April; in June, 

 July, and August the country is an arid and weary desert. But the 

 seasons for dates are almost reversed; they ripen in autumn. In 

 Egypt again, where everything depends upon the inundation, the 

 seasons are still more complicated; the inundation begins to subside 

 in October; in Upper Egypt the winter season which follows is far 

 the most important for agriculture, and crops sown as the water sub- 



VOL. LIV. — 17 



