208 ESSAYS. 
could give none to the heated plains below. So the broad in- 
terior of our country is forestless from dryness in our latitude, 
as the high northern zone is forestless from cold. 
Regions with distributed rain are naturally forest-clad. 
Regions with scanty rain, and at one season, are forestless or 
sparsely wooded, except they have some favoring compensa- 
tions. ainless regions are desert. 
The Atlantic United States in the zone of variable weather 
and distributed rains, and the Gulf of Mexico as a ealdron 
for brewing rain, and no continental expanse between that 
great caldron and the Pacific, crossed by a prevalent south- 
west wind in summer, is greatly favored for summer as well 
as winter rain. 
And so this forest region of ours, with an annual rainfall 
of fifty inches on the lower Mississippi, fifty-two inches in all 
the country east of it bordering the Gulf of Mexico, forty- 
five to forty-one in all the proper Atlantic district from east 
Florida to Maine and the whole region drained by the Ohio, 
— diminished only to thirty-four inches on the whole upper 
Mississippi and Great Lake region, —with this amount of 
rain, fairly distributed over the year, and the greater part not 
in the winter, our forest is well accounted for. 
The narrow district occupied by the Pacifie forest has a 
much more unequal rainfall, — more unequal in its different 
parts, most unequal in the different seasons of the year, very 
different in the same place in different years. 
From the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the 
amount of rain decreases moderately and rather regularly 
from south to north; but, as less is needed in a cold climate, 
there is enough to nourish forest throughout. On the Pacifie 
coast, from the Gulf of California to Puget Sound, the south- 
erly third has almost no rain at all; the middle portion has 
less than our Atlantic least ; the northern third has about our 
Atlantic average. 
Then, New England has about the same amount of rainfall 
in winter and in summer; Florida and Alabama about one 
half more in the three summer than in the three winter 
months, — a fairly equable distribution. But on the Pacific 
