THE FARMER AT HOME. J25 



by nitro-muriatic acid, or of salts in water. The separation of the 

 parts of a body by putrefaction, or the analysis of the natural struc- 

 ture of mixed bodies, as of animal or vegetable substances ; decom- 

 position. 



DISTRIBUTION OF PLANTS. While there is scarcely any 

 part of the globe on which plants are not found, many of the most 

 important ones are confined by certain causes to particular zones or 

 locations, and attempts to produce them in other situations, must of 

 necessity be abortive. Thus, the palm of the tropics and the maple 

 of the arctic circle cannot be made to change their places ; and the 

 same law applies to the apple and the orange, the Irish potato and 

 the yam. The grand modifying agent in the distribution of plants, is 

 temperature ; and this cause divides the vegetable productions of the 

 globe into zones, north and south of the equator, regularly marked, 

 unless influenced by causes local in their nature and action. There 

 are some general rules applicable to the investigation of the laws that 

 govern distribution, which cannot be overlooked ; and these are dif- 

 ference in elevation. It has been found that the average difference 

 in temperature on any given degree of longitude, is about equal to a 

 degree of Fahrenheit for every degree of latitude ; and that in eleva- 

 tion, there is on an average, a decrease of temperature equal to a de- 

 gree, for every five hundred feet of ascent. 



The result of these laws is, that plants of the temperate zones, 

 which will not grow on the plains of the tropics, flourish on the sides 

 of the mountains or the elevated plains, the temperature resembling 

 that of their favorite clime. Thus wheat and barley which cannot 

 be grown on the plains of the tropics, produce abundantly on the 

 table lands, some eight or ten thousand feet above the sea. The ef- 

 fect of these laws of distribution are sensibly felt in the United States, 

 in the production of fruits and grain. Thus the apple, which finds its 

 favorite clime in the northern States, does not grow in the southern 

 ones ; and the peach of the north is so inferior to that of the south 

 as scarcely to be considered the same fruit. The proper wheat zone 

 of the United States may be said to extend only from the thirty-eighth 

 to the forty-third degree of latitude. It is indeed cultivated both to 

 the north and the south of these limits, but experience proves that 

 the crop is less certain and the grain less perfect without than with- 

 in them. In the northern States corn is not as certain a crop as it 

 is south, but as far north as it succeeds, the produce is usually more 

 abundant, and the grain of a better quality than that grown farther 

 south. 



DIVISION OF LABOR. That separation of employments, 

 which, in political economy, is called the division of labor, can take 

 place only in civilized countries. In the flourishing states of Europe 

 and America we find men not only exclusively engaged in the exer- 

 cise of one particular art, but that art subdivided into numerous 



