126 An American Fruit-Farm 



fruit as an essential food. Ours is a stimulating, a 

 trying, an exhausting climate, variable, change- 

 able, capricious, wet, dry, hot, cold, — a climate of 

 sudden extremes. In some American valleys a 

 change of forty degrees in forty-eight hours is not 

 uncommon at any season of the year. This is due 

 to location, — the valley lying, for instance, like 

 that of Lake Erie, along the edge of two vast 

 basins, — the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. 

 But America as a climatic world is the home of 

 petty tumult, revolts, revolutions of heat and 

 cold, of drouth and rainfall. Grinding necessity 

 will keep us a temperate — that is, a non-alcoholic 

 people. The alcoholic peoples inhabit the British 

 Isles, Scandinavia, Russia at the north. These 

 regions are not a fruit-land as is ours, or as is 

 southern Europe. Germany, France, and Italy are 

 less alcoholic than England, Scotland, and Ireland. 

 Switzerland resembles England, as does Russia, 

 Finland, and northern Hungary. But all Europe 

 is less a fruit-country than is all America. The 

 time is not far away when our country will be ex- 

 porting to Europe all our fruits that bear carriage. 

 Europe will import wines from America, — an 

 importation already begun. Paradoxical as this 

 may seem, it is written in the law of climate. 

 Florida, Texas, California, and other vast and 

 favored fruit-regions of America will monopolize 

 the world's production of oranges, lemons, grape- 

 fruit, figs, olives, raisin-grapes, wines, dried and 

 canned fruits. Already America, including Canada 



