42 : College of Forestry 
winter contrasts of temperature which permit plant activity 
(speaking generally) during certain months and bring about 
an enforced dormancy during other months. In our yearly 
experience, no fact of our vegetation stands out so prom- 
inently as this rebound into activity in spring and subsidence 
into dormancy in the fall. If they had not grown common- 
place by being long taken for granted the adaptations in 
our plants to this type of climate would excite wonderment. 
In the zonal segregation of floral elements, manifestly there 
have been excluded from our region vast numbers of species 
whose protoplasm could not withstand the low temperature 
or the fluctuations of temperature, or excluded from other 
sauses associated with our temperature conditions. On the 
other hand it is conceivable that others are excluded by 
reason of not being able to withstand the highest temperatures 
which we have. 
2. By reason of its position with respect to the ocean and 
to the main continental mass and to the great inland lakes 
this State occupies a favorable position in regard to atmos- 
pherie moisture — relative humidity, rainfall and snow- 
fall. Climatically it is a region in which forest vegetation 
naturally dominates over other types—as grass land — 
which is the reverse of what prevails in the middle of the 
continent at the same latitude. The temperature conditions 
are also influenced by this maritime and inland lake rela- 
tion, extremes being notably reduced in territory adjacent 
to these waters. ‘See page 62. 
3. The general plan of relief features of the State,— low 
valleys and lake basin plains (the Ontario-Iroquois basin for 
example) ; elevated plateaus dissected into hill lands; moun- 
tain masses rising to noteworthy elevations (4,200 feet in the 
Catskills and 5,350 feet in the Adirondacks), serve to 
intensify climatic differences largely by influencing the 
temperature relation, but also through effect upon air move- 
ments, atmospheric moisture, relative humidity, clouds, fogs, 
dew formation, rainfall and snowfall. For example, the 
erowing season as measured between the last spring frost and 
the first fall frost is more or less 90 days in the high Adiron- 
