The American Garden. 



Vol. XI. 



JUNE, 1890. 



No. 6. 



CLIMATE AND ITS RELATION TO LIFE. 



T IS NOT without reason that the 

 staple sakitation and customar}' 

 inquiry are concerning the weather 

 and one's health. In all ages, in 

 every clime and in every stage of 

 society, the primary basis of con- 

 verse and the preliminary dis- 

 course include these two topics. This fact has been 

 the subject of a vast deal of criticism, but neither 

 sneer nor logic nor philosophy can put it down, be- 

 cause these topics are the essential foundations of 

 existence, the fundamental factors in climate and 

 life. Weather prophets will always have consider- 

 ation ; whatever will promote life will have atten- 

 tive audience. No advance of civilization can take 

 men far away from their physical nature and the 

 conditions in which it can best thrive. There are, 

 therefore, such relations between the two, climate 

 and life, relations so exacting, so certain, that in 

 principle they constitute a law, which if found, with 

 its limitations and modifications, must prove of su- 

 preme importance. 



This is as true in vegetable as in animal life. 

 The life principle is essentially the same in plant 

 and animal. We have kinship with the growing 

 plant. We mourn over the untimely frost. It ex- 

 tinguishes life, a life so common to both that its loss 

 is to us an affliction which almost approaches sym- 

 pathy. We have no sympathy for stones. Plants, 

 according to their species, demand a congenial clime ; 

 so does man, though his intelligence enables him, in 

 a measure, to surmount the disabilities of an ad- 

 verse one. He can construct a house and build a 

 fire. To a degree he can make his own climate. 

 Without this power of modification he would die as 

 surely as the plant away from its proper home. 



Notwithstanding the faculty which so largely distin- 

 guishes him from the vegetation around him, the 

 zones conspire against his highest efforts, and fill 

 his blood with elements so different, and put into his 

 physical constitution impulses so diverse, that the 

 varieties of mankind approximate those of any 

 known plant. What is that subtle influence, that 

 in spite of himself holds a mastery over him and 

 changes his nature ? 



Vegetable life is more at the mercy of the climate. 

 We say that man is cosmopolitan because of his 

 power to modify his surroundings. Vegetation, not 

 having this power, has a limit much more resti'icted. 

 A thorough knowledge of this limit, not simply of 

 plant existence, but of its highest production, is 

 worthy of all that observation can find, experience 

 demonstrate and science bestow. Given a plant use- 

 ful for man and beast, with a knowledge of its char- 

 acteristics of growth and maturity, where shall it 

 be planted ? Can we so far get a insight into the 

 relations of climate to life that we can, a priori, de- 

 termine the habitat of any given plant or animal ? ' 



Mere observation will not determine it. Nature 

 has a way of crushing out the life not adapted to 

 any given locality, but the study of a single map in 

 her ample book in search of what she can produce 

 in the region delineated, judging only from what she 

 docs produce, would make short shrift of the student 

 who limits his knowledge to observation. Because 

 the potato and tobacco plants were found in Amer- 

 ica and not in Europe, it did not follow that Nature 

 forbade their cultivation in the Eastern Hemisphere. 

 Rabbits were plentiful in England, but none were 

 found in Australia. Nature did not produce them 

 there ; but that did not prevent them from becoming, 

 when transported, a pest that millions of pounds 



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