EFFECT OF FOREST ON CLIMATE. 421 



Jand is most favourable to grasses and stock raising. The 

 immense fresh-water lakes and rivers of Canada have a 

 counteracting effect on the dry and warm summers, which 

 as a general rule parch vegetation throughout the most 

 fertile districts of the great republic. The forests also 

 exercise a very beneficial effect on the climate both 

 in summer and winter. In the western states of the 

 Union there is no forest to afford shelter from the cold 

 winds and snow-storms of winter, and to check the eva- 

 poration in the early summer, which is consequently very 

 rapid, and then as a natural consequence the land is 

 burnt and the crops withered. The forests of Canada 

 exclude the sun from the ground saturated with melting 

 snow, therefore evaporation proceeds slowly and lasts all 

 summer. Owing to this humidity, which favours grass 

 and cereals, and to the heat of summer, which equals that 

 of southern Europe, there is a wider range of crops grown 

 in Canada than in perhaps any other country. On the 

 one hand there are the crops of a cool climate, such as 

 potatoes, turnips, wheat, barley, hay, and oats; on the 

 other hand the crops of a hot climate, such as Indian 

 corn, grapes, peaches, pumpkins, &c. 



In Canada West the mean temperature during eight 

 months of the twelve is 40. The mean temperature 'of 

 the summer is about 70, autumn 48, winter 15, spring 

 40. Eain falls from sixty to seventy days in the year. 

 The navigation on the lakes and rivers is closed for nearly 

 five months. In the eastern provinces there is not much 

 difference in the heat of the summers, though the winters 

 are longer and more severe. Even in Quebec the mean 

 temperature for seven months in the twelve is over 40. 



