CHAPTER XVI. 



CLIMATE. 



Heat and Moisture are the main governing conditions of 

 plant growth. In a preceding chapter the relations of soils and 

 plant growth to water have been considered ; in the present one 

 the relations of both moisture and heat to soils and plants will 

 be discussed ; and to do this intelligibly to those not making 

 a specialty of such studies, it becomes necessary to introduce, 

 first, a summary consideration of the subject of climate. 



Climatic conditions control, and to a great extent determine, 

 the industrial pursuits of every country ; all the more so as the 

 rapid communication and transportation by means of modern 

 appliances now brings every part of the globe in competition 

 with every other. The question is not now what it may be 

 intrinsically possible to do under certain climatic and geo- 

 graphical conditions, but whether these things can be done with 

 a reasonable prospect of profit and commercial success, in 

 competition with other countries offering more or less of simi- 

 lar possibilities. While it is true that the cost of labor fre- 

 quently enters most heavily into such problems, yet favorable 

 or unfavorable climatic or soil-conditions may in many cases 

 turn the scale. Thus the high price of labor and fuel on the 

 Pacific coast of the United States would at first blush seem 

 to render competition with Europe and the East in the pro- 

 duction of beet sugar commercially impossible; yet exception- 

 ally favorable climatic and soil-conditions concur to turn the 

 scale in favor of California at least, so as to have placed that 

 state at the head of the sugar-producing 1 states of the Union. 

 A general understanding of the climatic conditions which con- 

 cern the United States more or less directly, is therefore need- 

 ful to an appreciation of their agricultural possibilities. 



Climatic Conditions. The factors usually mentioned as 

 constituting climate are temperature, rainfall and winds. 

 Since the latter two factors, however, are themselves merely 



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