IMPORTANCE OF SUMMER RAINS. 2 
This conclusion, however applicable to the climate and to the 
soil of France, is too broadly stated to be received as a general 
truth; and in countries like the United States, where rain is 
comparatively rare during the winter and abundant during the 
summer half of the year, common observation shows that the 
quantity of water furnished by deep wells and by natural springs 
depends almost as much upon the rains of summer as upon those 
of the rest of the year, and consequently that a large portion of 
the rain of that season must find its way into strata too deep for 
the water to be wasted by evaporation.* 
stratum between one metre and a half (59 inches) and three metres (10 feet) 
from the surface was then permanently in the condition of a saturated 
sponge, neither receiving nor losing humidity during the summer half of the 
year, but receiving from superior, and giving off to lower, strata an equal 
amount of moisture during the winter half.—JounstruP, Om Hugtighedens 
DBevegeise t den naturtige Jordbund. Kjibenhayn, 1866. 
Dalton’s experiments in the years 1796, 1797, and 1798 appeared to show 
that the mean absorption of the downfall by the earth in those years was 
twenty-nine per cent. 
Dickinson, employing the same apparatus for eight years, found the absorp- 
tion to vary widely in different years, the mean being forty-seven per cent. 
Charnock’s experiments in two years show an absorption of from seventeen 
to twenty-seven per cent. 
* According to observations at one hundred military stations in the United 
States, the precipitation ranges from three and a quarter inches at Fort Yuma 
in California to about seventy-two inches at Fort Pike, Louisiana, the mean 
for the entire territory, not including Aliaska, being thirty-six inches. In the 
different sections of the Union it is as follows: 
North-easterm States: .2... 2. cases ccce oc .- 41 inches. 
ING W VOUS rraerinte ahi ain « caaete tia cinecmen 36 ee 
Middle S tateshs ce Gene tee. eek Chat eee etd 
OAM eR Ny ATL Pee tas St ee a ee Wim te 40 6 
PE NeRn Spatedinia. | sah .w Rieu eld, oxic dis tc 51 se 
S. W. States and Indian Territories........ 394 SS 
Western States and Territories............ 30 ee 
Texas anduNew. Mexico's .é.<.< seu, eesecsce «24 86 
Califormeareetican an. SES AIS PCE tsp he a) C0 
Oregon and Washington Territory......... 50 ce 
The mountainous regions, it appears, do not receive the greatest amount of 
precipitation. The average downfall of the Southern States bordering on the 
