VALUE OF NARROW EXTENSIONS OF FAUNAS. 15 



THE ARID REGIONS. 



While consideralble progress lias been made in ascertaining what 

 agricultural products are adapted to the climatic conditions of south- 

 ern California and southern Arizona, this has been done at great 

 cost, and nothing like a complete knowledge of the subject has been 

 attained. Before this will be possible the life zones and their sub- 

 divisions must be accurately mapped and corresponding arid areas 

 in Africa, Arabia, Persia, India, Chile, and Australia must be studied 

 with reference to agricultural productions which might be introduced 

 with profit in proper zones in our arid Southwest. Nature has not been 

 overgenerous in the distribution of water in this part of our country, 

 but she has been lavish in her gifts of soils and climates. The fruit 

 growers of California were long in finding out that their State com- 

 prises all of the agricultural belts of America except the humid 

 tropical, and that its different areas are naturally adapted to a great 

 diversity of agricultural and horticultural products; and even at the 

 present day few realize that in the southern half of the State hun 

 dreds of farms might be so laid out with reference to the mountain 

 slopes that each would embrace sections of all the agricultural belts, 

 enabling the fortunate husbandman to produce not only early and late 

 ripenings of small fruits and garden vegetables, but also an astound- 

 ing diversity of crops, from the apples, cherries, potatoes, and hardy 

 cereals of the upper Transition and lower edge of the Boreal belts, to 

 the oranges, lemons, almonds, olives, and cotton of the Lower Sonoran 

 zone, and in certain localities the pineapple, date, and citron of the 

 arid Tropical areas. It is probably not too much to say that an accu- 

 rate map of the agricultural belts of California in the early days 

 would have saved the State in the aggregate millions of dollars that 

 have been expended in finding out what crops are best adapted to 

 particular areas, and although much has now been learned by per- 

 sistent and costly experiments, such a map would still be of very 

 great value. 



SPECIAL VALUE OF NARROW EXTENSIONS OF FAUNAS. 



In looking at the map of the life zones (see frontispiece), it will be 

 seen that nearly all of the belts and areas send out long arms which 

 penetrate far into the heart of adjoining areas. When such arms 

 occupy suitable soils in thickly inhabited regions, so that their prod- 

 ucts may be conveniently marketed, they are of more than ordinary 

 value, for the greater the distance from its area of principal produc- 

 tion a crop can be made to succeed, the higher price it will command. 

 Hence, farms favorably situated in northern prolongations or islands 

 of southern zones, or in southern prolongations or islands of northern 

 zones, should be worth considerably more per acre than those situated 

 within normal parts of the same zones. The obvious reason is that 



