RULES AND SUGGESTIONS IN FARMING. 201 



to the cultivated grasses, to roots, and particularly to 

 wheat. ^ 



24. There are other circumstances, in regard to the 

 location of a farm, which demand the consideration of the 

 master, which refer to latitude and elevation. Plants 

 have their natural zone, or climate, beyond which they do 

 not grow, or thrive but imperfectly. There is a differ- 

 ence in every degree, or seventy miles, of latitude, upon 

 tide-water, of five or six days, in the forwardness of nat- 

 ural vegetation in the spring, and nearly a like difference 

 in the blighting indications of autumn. But what is of 

 equal importance, but less generally regarded, is the dif- 

 ference in climate produced by altitude. Three hundred 

 feet of elevation is considered equal to one degree of lat- 

 itude, in its influence upon temperature. Hence it does 

 not follow, that because a crop will thrive and ripen in a 

 given latitude upon tide- water, it will thrive and ripen 

 well in the same latitude at a higher elevation. On the 

 contrary, to be better understood, we say, that, other 

 things being alike, the climate on tide-water, in latitude 

 42°, is similar to that of a place three hundred feet eleva- 

 ted above tide-water in latitude 41°, or of a place nine 

 hundred feet above tide-water in latitude 39° ; so that the 

 table-land of Mexico, in latitude 16°, at an elevation of 

 seven thousand eight hundred feet above the ocean, 



* An able writer in the Edinburgh Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, 

 in reference to these formations, terms the primitive, which it seems 

 comprises the most elevated lands in Scotland, the region of heath and 

 coarse herbage ; the transition, the natural region of the grasses ; and 

 the secondary, the region of the cultivated grasses, and particularly 

 adapted to arable and alternate husbandry. He assigns to each a par- 

 ticular and distinct breed of cattle. To the first, or higher region, a 

 thick-haired, small, hardy breed ; to the second, or middle region, those 

 of large size ; and to the third, or lower region, those that are more 

 sensitive to cold, gross feeders, and that acquire the greatest weight. 

 He then goes on to show, from numerous examples, that the sev^al 

 breeds are the most profitable in the several districts assigned them ; 

 end that they have been manifestly improved, in most cases, by a judi- 

 cious cross with the improved short horns. There is much good sense 

 in the writer's remarks ; and although the description of the three for- 

 mations does not fully apply in the United States, the remarks as to 

 the influence of altitude or climate, upon different breeds of domestic 

 aoimalsj are entitled to high consideration. 



