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The Australasian Scientific Magazine* [Sept, i, 1885. 
Lake Worth’s special claims to attention over the more northern parts of 
Florida lie in her climate, her productions, and sporting fields. The climate 
is unique, there being no duplicate of it on this continent, and probably 
none in the world ; the productions are more tropical than those everywhere 
farther north of it; and the sportsman finds abundance of fish and game. 
The peculiarity of the climate arises from two causes, the Gulf Stream and 
the trade winds. The former flows northwards within a few miles of us, 
and when the ocean winds are strong from the east the stream is forced to 
within one mile of our coast. This stream of water, at a temperature of 
82 deg. Lahr., is some twenty-five or thirty miles wide, and in some places 2000 
feet deep, flowing at the rate of some four miles an hour. As it advances 
northward it gets wider and shallower and of lower temperature; but in this 
neighbourhood the above figures are stated as close to the prevailing facts. 
The temperature varies very little during the year. Now the trade winds, 
drawn southward by the up-flowing heated air of the tropics, and deflected 
westward by the rotation of the earth, blow constantly, year in and year out, in 
a south-westerly direction in this latitude. 'These perpetual north-east winds- 
bring to our shores the air attempered by the Gulf Stream, and thereby 
keep the temperature here always almost the same, summer and winter. 
This pouring over us an atmosphere of about 80 deg. Fahr. cools our summers 
and warms our winters, besides keeping a never-dying breeze to fan us.. 
The thermometer hardly ever rises above 90 deg. in the shade in midsummer, 
and last winter it fell at no time below 45 deg. The older settlers have seen 
frost in places, but so light as to nip none but the tenderest and youngest 
of vegetables. The climate is, as far as the destruction of vegetable life 
is concerned, well-nigh tropical. Professor Curtiss, of the Agricultural 
Department in Washington, who spent several years exploring South 
Florida for botanical specimens, reports that vegetation on the Atlantic 
coast is more than a degree and a half more tropical than it is on the 
Mexican Gulf coast, and that iso-floral lines would run from north-east on 
the Atlantic to south-west on the Gulf. During the hottest part of our 
sunniest midsummer days I rarely ever find the heat oppressive, if I will 
keep in the shade and in the breeze, and a sultry night is almost unknown. 
In August I have felt chilly oftener than I have felt the swelter of overheat.. 
In the sun it is hot, of course ; but to the man that can command his 
time during the heat of the day, there is no more delightful climate in 
the world. And for about four hours in the morning and three hours in 
the afternoon there is no more delightful climate tor the labourer in the fields. 
From the rest of Florida, however, this Lake Worth region is dis- 
tinguished for its productions, growing as it does several important fruits 
that cannot be grown farther north, or can be grown only with extreme and 
expensive precautions against cold. In all Florida north of this precautions 
against frost must be taken in growing almost all the fruits known as 
Floridan, such as the orange, the lemon, the banana, the pine-apple, citron, 
grape fruit, the several anonas, the guava, and so on. The same can be 
grown in this climate successfully without such precautions. And in 
addition to these, we can grow several that may be said to be too tropical* 
for all regions further north, among which are the lime (the Tahiti, being 
the finest, will not live without careful watching everywhere north of us), 
the date, the cocoa-nut, the mango, the tamarind, the almond, the pawpaw, 
and several others. 
The fruits thus far grown here, and planted most extensively, are the 
cocoa-nut, the lime, the p ine-apple, and banana. There are about 25,000- 
