DAY AND NIGHT TEMPERATURES. 245 



description which we have given of this region, over 

 by far the greater portion of its surface. In South 

 Africa, Australia, and South America notably so. Also, 

 as far as our knowledge of this country in North Africa 

 extends, the same conditions seem to hold good. In 

 Asia too, as a general rule, the same description applies 

 to the greater part of the territory included in the 

 limits of the Bush Country in that continent. It would, 

 however, be too long to go over all this region in 

 detail. In North, or rather Central America, however, 

 the description of these latitudes as a bush country, 

 fails, for reasons which we shall presently state, although 

 considerable areas of regular bush do exist there also, 

 notably in Northern Mexico. 



The leading characteristics of the climate of the 

 Great Bush Country generally may be briefly de- 

 scribed as follows: that although the annual mean 

 temperature is always decidedly lower than in the 

 equatorial zone, yet the day temperatures run up 

 considerably higher, especially during the dry season; 

 and curiously enough, we think we do not exagger- 

 ate when we say that the further we get away from 

 the equator, in these regions, the greater do these 

 day temperatures become; while the nights become 

 proportionately colder. In the section on climate, how- 

 ever, the causes of these remarkable phenomena have 

 been gone into in considerable detail it is because of 

 the dryness of the atmosphere. The drier it gets, 

 the more scorching do the solar rays become by day, 

 and at the same time the more rapid does the radia- 

 tion of heat become from the moment of sunset. But 

 of course the extreme dryness of the atmosphere does 



