BETTER HALF OF THE UNITED STATES 



gone at the outset, restoring the old vigor to the shat- 

 tered body. The faces of the permanent sojourners 

 within their influence they paint with the brown badge 

 of health. It is too early as yet to observe the full effect 

 of the climate on the population of the arid West, but 

 sufficient results are apparent to warrant the assertion 

 that these influences will breed a great race. 



The element of aridity not only fosters health, but 

 moderates and makes more readily bearable the sum- 

 mer's heat and winters cold. It is the damp cold that 

 penetrates to the marrow. It is the humid heat that 

 prostrates. To say that a cold of thirty degrees below 

 zero at Helena, in Montana, is felt less than ten degrees 

 above zero in Chicago or New York ; or to say that 

 eighty-five degrees above zero in the East is more dan- 

 gerous to the laborer than one hundred and fifteen de- 

 grees at Indio, in the Colorado desert, is to put a severe 

 tax on popular credulity. Nevertheless, both state- 

 ments are literally true, as all who have experienced the 

 conditions testify. 



Science corroborates the story. The United States 

 Weather Bureau has perfected in recent years an in- 

 strument to measure the difference between apparent 

 and sensible temperature, which is determined by hu- 

 midity, or lack of it. The instrument, which consists 

 of a dry and of a wet thermometer, has been in opera- 

 tion at Yuma, in southwestern Arizona, since 1888. Mr. 

 A. Ashenberger, the official observer, reports that the 

 hottest day in that period was July 20, 1892. On that day 

 the dry thermometer registered one hundred and four- 

 teen degrees of apparent heat, and the wet thermometer 

 sixty-nine degrees of sensible heat a difference of forty- 



25 



