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"CLIMATE IN ITS EELATION TO LIFE." 

 [By Mr. F. Bainbridge]. 



When friends meet, after the usual hand-shaking and the familiar "How do?" 

 it is very general to make some cursory allusion to that grim spectre ever 

 haunting the British mind— the weather ; and no w^onder, as upon its favourable 

 state so much of our comfort, convenience, health, and even our existence, 

 depends. Placed as are the British Isles in the midst of an ever-moving element, 

 their climate, owing to the warm oceanic currents, is rendered much more 

 temperate than Continental districts of similar latitudes ; from our island position 

 also our climate is more variable, hence it is that the topic of the weather is of so 

 much interest and is so frequently discussed. Without entering into the details 

 of what causes the variations of climate, it is enough for our present purpose to 

 remark that we cannot judge of the temperature of a country or district by the 

 degree of latitude on which it is situated. Upon the knowledge of this fact has 

 been founded a system of Isothermal lines, or lines of equal heat, on which 

 depends very largely the distribution of animal and vegetable life ; moreover, as 

 heat and moisture are the all producers, we need not wonder at finding, on 

 approaching the tropics, not only a greater profusion of animals and plants, but 

 also an absolute increase in the actual number of different kinds, and although 

 peculiarities of soil modify the nature of its products, yet, as a rule, under the 

 same conditions of heat and moisture a similar vegetation appears ; moreover, as 

 the animal world depends upon the plants directly, as in the vegetable feeders, 

 and indirectly in the carnivora, so must these follow them, being in fact 

 inseparably connected with the determinate forms of vegetables, so that heat and 

 cold are not the only consequences of the position of the sun in relation to the 

 earth, but also the whole life existent thereon. Thus in the far off regions where 

 the sun sheds its rays so obliquely as to leave the land ever bound in ice, where 

 vegetation cannot exist, simulating its native snows in the whiteness of its 

 fleece, appears the solitary polar bear, dividing .the products of the ocean with the 

 few human beings who even there find pleasure in life. Leaving this ice-bound 

 region, we proceed to Lapland, where rye and barley make their appearance ; 

 these herald an existence for the rat, then follows the cat, the low whisper of the 

 graceful birch (the most northern of our trees) speaks to the squirrel of a scanty 

 meal ; the Moose-deer, the Reindeer, and even the smoke-dried toad-coloured 

 Laplanders themselves, find their bread in the Lichens growing from the very 

 stones, and thank God in the simplicity of their hearts for a contenting meal. 

 Happy, thrice happy, people to whom Ovid's description of the silver age is still 

 applicable — " Their soil is not wounded by the plough, nor is the iron din of arms 

 to be heard ; neither have mankind found their way to the bowels of the earth : 

 nor do they engage in wars to define its boundaries." This people perpetually 

 change their abode, and live in tents or rude huts,ifollowing a pastoral life, just 

 like the patriarchs of old. But to continue our journey southwards. As pine 



