EVANSVILLE 



2105 



EVAPORATION 



EVANSVILLE, ev'anzvil, IND., the county 

 seat of Vanderburgh County and an important 

 manufacturing center, on the Ohio River. It 

 is the second largest city in the state, ranking 

 next to Indianapolis. In 1910 the population 

 was 69,647 and in 1916 it was estimated to be 

 76,078. The city is in the southwestern corner 

 of the state, 150 miles directly southwest of 

 Indianapolis, 163 miles east by south of Saint 

 Louis, Mo., and 155 miles by rail and 200 miles 

 by the river west of Louisville, Ky. 



Evansville is on six trunk lines the Chicago 

 & Eastern Illinois; the Cleveland, Cincinnati, 

 Chicago & Saint Louis; the Southern; the 

 Louisville & Nashville; the Illinois Central and 

 the Evansville & Indianapolis railroads and 

 is the terminus of several interurban electric 

 roads. Two belt lines connect the industrial 

 plants of the town with all of the railroads. 

 Six steamboat lines make Evansville their 

 home port. 



Within the city limits there are five soft-coal 

 mines, and within a radius of fifty miles there 

 are about sixty such mines. This advantage, 

 together with the shipping facilities to points 

 north, south, east and west, by rail and river, 

 and abundant water power furnished by a 

 $2,000,000 government dam above the city, 

 gives the place great importance as a shipping 

 and manufacturing center. There are 400 fac- 

 tories, employing 12,000 workers. Evansville 

 is a great wheat market and the second largest 

 hardwood lumber market in the world; its saw 

 mills cut and ship lumber, notably Indiana 

 quartered oak, to all parts of the United States 

 and Europe. The largest industrial enterprises 

 are manufactories of furniture. 



The prominent buildings are a courthouse 

 (the largest in the state), a customhouse, city 

 hall, United States Marine Hospital, a state 

 hospital for the insane, the Elks' Home, Saint 

 Mary's and Deaconess hospitals, three Car- 

 negie libraries, the Willard Public Library and 

 the Little Sisters' Home for the Aged. In 

 1916 a fund was secured by county bonds and 

 popular subscription for the erection of a 

 Coliseum costing $150,000. 



Evansville was founded in 1816 by General 

 Robert M. Evans. It was incorporated as a 

 city in 1847 and reincorporated in 1905. The 

 completion of the Wabash and Erie Canal in 

 1853, from Evansville to Toledo, Ohio, a dis- 

 tance of 400 miles, contributed greatly to the 

 growth of the city. Evansville is built too 

 high above the river to suffer from the occa- 

 sional overflows of the Ohio. 



EVAPORATION, e vap o ra ' shu n. When 

 water is left standing in an open dish in a warm 

 room it soon "dries up"; damp clothes hung 

 on a line in the sunshine lose all their moisture 

 in a short time. The water in them is changed 

 to vapor by the heat in the atmosphere, and 

 the warmer and drier the surrounding air the 

 more rapidly this process, called evaporation, 

 takes place. With a high temperature there 

 may be a great deal of vapor in the air; for 

 instance, at 90 there may be almost twice 

 as much as at 70. At freezing point there is 

 very little, but a certain amount of moisture 

 must always be in the atmosphere, for no living 

 thing could exist in perfectly dry air. When 

 all the vapor that can exist at a particular 

 temperature is present, the air is saturated, or 

 at dew-point, but this seldom happens except 

 when it is raining. Evaporation takes place at 

 any temperature from the surface of a liquid, 

 for even ice and snow send off vapor, which 

 is especially noticeable on a day after a snow- 

 storm when the temperature rises suddenly. 



Air containing much moisture is said to be 

 humid, although as a general thing the amount 

 is much less than that required for saturation. 

 The extent of this humid condition, or humid- 

 ity, in tropical regions is very great, especially 

 near the sea, while in cooler climates it is 

 much less. A person can withstand a great 

 deal more cold in air which contains very little 

 vapor; this explains why cold winds blowing 

 over water seem more penetrating than winds 

 farther inland in the same temperature. With- 

 out water, plants and animals cannot live, and 

 large areas would be uninhabitable if it were 

 not for rain produced by the water which 

 evaporates from the oceans, lakes, rivers, ponds 

 and moist earth. 



The humidity in the air is often shown by 

 clouds. If they form rapidly, or if small 

 patches of cloud increase rapidly in size, the 

 humidity is increasing; while if the cloud area 

 is becoming smaller, it is highly probable that 

 the air is becoming drier. The moisture which 

 plants absorb throdgh their roots evaporates 

 mainly through the leaves, and in them the 

 process is called transpiration (see LEAVES). 

 The more leaf surface exposed, the more rapid 

 will be the transpiration, but the structure of 

 the leaf, as in the pine needle, often prevents 

 very rapid transpiration. In other cases the 

 amount of water which evaporates is immense, 

 as in a beech tree 110 years old, which was 

 estimated as transpiring 2,250 gallons in one 

 summer. 



