WEST OF THE APPALACHIANS 91 



parallel, are grown in enormous quantities, and 

 tobacco still remains a staple product of Kentucky and 

 Tennessee. South of the thirty-seventh parallel, con- 

 ditions are suitable for the growth of cotton, which, 

 from Texas to the Atlantic, becomes the chief crop; 

 indeed, the southern States are the most important 

 cotton producers in the world, for it requires a well- 

 watered soil, though otherwise adapted to somewhat dry 

 climatic conditions. Sugar-cane has long been grown 

 in the southern States, but there is a tendency towards 

 Limiting it to the warmer climate of the West Indies, 

 Mexico, and inter-tropical regions. This rich agricultural 

 centre of the States has long been the mainstay of the 

 wealth of the country, and must remain so, in spite of 

 the invasion of industry. Its importance is so far- 

 reaching that the condition of its crops is anxiously 

 watched year by year in other countries which depend 

 on it for the raw materials of many of their 

 manufactures. 



For a long time, also, the American forests of those 

 parts have supplied the world with valuable timber, 

 but on account both of their rapid disappearance and 

 of the growing consumption at home, they are no longer 

 able to do so to the same extent as formerly. 



Southern States. The Atlantic shelf up to Cape 

 Hatteras, and the northern shores of the Mexican Sea, 

 enjoy a warm and rainy climate, whose expression in 

 the plant-world is the evergreen rain-forest of a tem- 

 perate type ; but the variety of conditions of the soil 

 induces a corresponding diversity in the flora and 

 curtails the area belonging to the rain-forest proper. 

 On the northern shores of the Gulf of Mexico, nearest to 

 the beach, comes a strip of sandy downs tenanted by 

 swamp-pines and sabal palmettos. Behind this curtain 



