74 ANNUAL REPORT 



the standard apple has been definitely fixed, yet the line has 

 not been marked with sufficient clearness for our comprehension. 

 And as the indications now are that we are pretty near that 

 line it seems best that in our efforts to find and follow its intricate 

 and crooked ways, we admit that cold is king and govern our- 

 selves accordingly. 



MODIFICATIONS. 



If our country was a dead level, and we had no winds or bodies 

 of water, or timber, and the earth's axis was perpendicular to 

 the ecliptic, then lines of latitude and isothermal lines would 

 run parallel, cold would increase towards the north one degree 

 Fahrenheit to one or two degrees of latitude. And if under 

 these circumstances we had just one high mountain cold would 

 increase with altitude one degree to two or three hundred feet. 

 Hence other things being equal latitude and altitude will deter- 

 mine the degree of cold to a certainty. But to understand these 

 other things, there's the rub. For with ocean breezes from the 

 west, bent, twisted and modified by ranges of mountains and 

 counter currents, with our blizzards from the north meeting 

 and commingling with balmy breezes from the south, with the 

 warmth absorbed by the earth ascending and cold from its un- 

 bounded and indescribable realms above descending, with the in- 

 fluences of different soils, bodies of water, timber, and electricity, 

 we have a most discouraging complication and it is not strange 

 that the facts we have observed should sometimes contradict our 

 seemingly well founded theories. 



If I understand all the causes that tend to modify climate and 

 all the counteracting influences it would require a volume to 

 fully explain. I will therefore only touch upon a few points and 

 leave the thoughtful reader to enlarge at will. 



I am free to admit that I am too small for my subject. I am 

 in about the position of a certain presidential candidate when he 

 said the tariff was a local question. That remark was taken as 

 an evidence of weakness; but I believe he was about half right, 

 ;for its beneficial effects so clearly visible in some localities are 

 scarcely perceptible in others. So of climate, there are potent 

 softening influences in some sections whilst others seems to be 

 left almost entirely out in the cold, and I have sometimes thought 

 Minnesota did not get a fair share of warm breezes, or tariff 

 benefits. 



