CHAPTER VI 



WOODLAND AND GRASSLAND CLIMATES IN THE 

 COLD TEMPERATE BELTS 



I. General Considerations. 2. Forest and Prairie in the United States of 

 North America. Four districts based on climate and vegetation. Mean rainfall in 

 the four districts. The winds. 3. Climate and Vegetation in Russia. Climate of 

 the steppes. Dissimilarity of the winds in Northern and Southern Russia. Climatic 

 conditions of the forests in Central and Northern Russia. 4. The Hungarian Plain. 

 Hunfalvy on the Hungarian steppe-climate. 5. Cold Temperate Eastern Asia. Condi- 

 tions in regard to precipitations. Distribution of forest and grassland. Summary. 



i. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 



As the distance from the tropics increases, the formations, so far as they 

 depend on climate, become less diversified. Xerophilous woodland is 

 wanting, at any rate as a climatic formation ; the distinction between high- 

 forest and low-forest can hardly be traced ; shrub formations, which find in 

 heath their most widely spread type, depend in the first place on edaphic 

 conditions. Grassland usually assumes the form of steppe, more rarely of 

 meadow, but never of savannah. 



In a great part of the temperate zones where the winter is cold, the 

 covering of vegetation has been so altered by the constructive or destructive 

 activity of man and of domesticated animals, that natural formations are 

 extremely rare ; this is true, for instance, of Central Europe, of the greater 

 part of China and Japan, of a considerable part of Russia and North 

 America. Somewhat less altered is the original vegetation in Eastern and 

 Southern Russia, in temperate Siberia, and in many — particularly the 

 western — territories of North America. In North America the disturbances 

 are also of comparatively recent origin, and the natural character of the 

 vegetation may be reconstituted in our minds from descriptions of eye- 

 witnesses. Russia and North America are those countries of the northern 

 cold temperate belt in which the climatic conditions of woodland, grassland, 

 and desert can at present be most readily apprehended. The land area 



