Temperate zone

“ In the occurrence of the temperate zone seasons lies much of the secret—who can say how much of it?—of the energy, ambition, self-reliance, industry, thrift, of the inhabitants of the temperate zones. ”

“ In the portion of the continent within the temperate zone, more especially within the continental basin, the large number of hours of sunshine during a summer's day is frequently accompanied by a temperature as great as is usually experienced in the torrid zone. ”

“ In the temperate zone, again, the sun strikes the earth too much aslant. Human activities develop; intellect is keen; the balance of passion and reason is normally adjusted: but vegetation is slow and restricted. As compared with the productiveness of the tropics, the best that the temperate zone can do is scanty.
There are a few spots on the globe where the conditions of the country override these laws, and do away with these lines of discrimination in favors. Florida, Italy, the South of France and of Spain, a few islands, and South California complete the list. ”

“ First, the arctic province, with prevailing uniformity. Second, the temperate zone, with at least three distinct zoological provinces—the European temperate zone, west of the Ural Mountains, the Asiatic temperate [Pg 24] zone east of the Ural Mountains, and the American temperate zone, which may be subdivided into two, the eastern and the western—for the animals east and west of the Rocky Mountains differ sufficiently to constitute two distinct zoological provinces. ”

“ It would appear, that the finest portion, at least apparently so, of the north temperate zone, between the parallels of 30° and 48° latitude, when nearly of the level of the ocean, is not so favourable for human existence as the more northern part between 50° and 60°, or even the torrid zone. ”

“ It looks now as if the north-and-south lines were to be strengthened the world over, as the occupied and exploited north temperate zone reaches north toward the frigid zone, now grown warmer by the very opening of the lands to the sun and the long burning of coal, and south toward the tropics, now made more habitable by the new knowledge of tropical medicine, and even across the tropics to the sister temperate zone of the southern hemisphere. ”

“ For we find that all animals and plants of the arctic zones agree in certain respects and are uniform over the three continents which verge towards the northern pole, whilst those of the temperate zone agree also in certain respects, but differ somewhat from each other within definite limits, in the respective continents. And the differences grow more and more prominent as we approach the tropical zone, which has its peculiar Fauna and Flora in each continent ”

“ The temperate zone, so far 182 at least as North America is concerned, deserves its name only when the mean of the yearly changes in temperature is considered, as much of it is hotter in summer than equal areas between the tropics, and in winter over all of its northern half the cold is, at times, nearly or quite as intense as during the same season in the far north. ”

“ By reason of this variation in temperature and soil, all the products of the torrid and temperate zones can be cultivated.
The average person has a habit of associating tropical lands with the idea of intense and disagreeable heat. This person does not stop to think that the conditions are often much different from what they seem on the map. Even at the equator, which one would naturally think almost uninhabitable, the upland sections are just as well adapted for the abode of white people as the temperate zone. ”

“ Northward of the temperate zone the rainfall generally decreases as we approach the arctic regions; except where the influence of warm ocean currents to windward creates comparatively local exceptions, as in the case of Norway and Alaska. ”

“ The Temperate Zone of North America will always harbor a more powerful people than the corresponding zone of South America, because the latter continent begins to contract and tapers off to a point where the other at the northern Tropic begins to spread out. ”

“ The North Temperate Zone is preëminently the culture zone of the earth. It is the seat of the most important, most steadily progressive civilizations, and the source of all the cultural stimuli which have given an upward start to civilization in other zones during the past three centuries. It contains the Mediterranean basin, which was the pulsing heart of ancient history, and all the modern historically important regions of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. ”

“ The middle, or temperate, zone, extending from about eight thousand to about thirteen thousand feet above the sea, possesses a very varied flora which includes many groups characteristic of the Andes, and entirely or mainly confined to that range, with representatives of numerous genera that are widely diffused105 through the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, and a smaller number of representative species of groups belonging to the tropical American flora. The climate of this region is marked by the absence of all extremes of temperature. ”

“ If, on the contrary, the heat of the atmosphere be on the increase, the plants and animals of low grounds would ascend to higher levels, the equatorial species would migrate into the temperate zone, and those of the temperate into the arctic circle. ”

“ It may be true that individual tropical shrubs and flowers do surpass everything in the rest of the world; but that is to be expected, because the tropical zone comprises a much greater land area than the two temperate zones, while, owing to its more favourable climate, it produces a still larger proportion of species of plants, and a greater number of peculiar natural orders. ”

“ A land of monotonous relief has a uniform climate, while a region rich in vertical articulations is rich also in local varieties of climate.1254 A highland of considerable elevation forms a cold district in the Temperate Zone, a temperate one in the Tropics, and a moist one in a desert or steppe. Especially in arid and torrid belts does the value of elevation for human life increase. ”

“ The temperate zone would gradually give place to a frigid zone, and, as the day darkened into an eternal night, this would be succeeded by an impenetrable region in which the degree of cold would vastly exceed anything we have on earth at present. Thus man, confined to somewhat less than half the globe, would see nothing of the moon or stars, and the earth, with the sun shining on it, would be the only bodies visible. ”

“ If these cold seasons were to become frequent, in consequence of a gradual and general refrigeration of the atmosphere, such migrations would be more and more regular, until, at length, many animals, now confined to the arctic regions, would become the tenants of the temperate zone; while the inhabitants of the temperate zone would approach nearer to the equator. At the same time, many species previously established on high mountains would begin to descend, in every latitude, towards the middle regions ”

“ In the cold polar zones it is too hard. Temperate zone man can bring in what he desires of polar and tropical products, and himself raises what he needs in the great variety of climates of the intermediate latitudes. ”

“ Many animals live better in our zone than in any other zone. They need temperate climate.
SOME ANIMALS OF THE TEMPERATE ZONES
Which are domestic and which are wild animals? Describe each and tell how it is useful to man.
ZEBRA.
4
THE HOT ZONE
If we take a long trip to the south we find it growing warmer and warmer until at last we have reached a land where it is warm all the year through. This is the Torrid Zone.
The plants do not rest nor die in winter there, for there is no cold weather. These plants keep right on growing through the year. ”

“ Hence we infer that the southern hemisphere is in certain zones cooler than the northern, not by reason of its short summer or long winter, but it is the cooler chiefly on account of the latent heat which is brought thence by vapour, and set free here by condensation.
21. England about the pole of hemisphere with most land.—Within the torrid zone the land is nearly equally divided north and south of the equator, the proportion being as 5 to 4. In the temperate zones, however, the north with its land is thirteen times in excess of the south. ”

“ The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitant of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics. ”

“ The advantage of the Temperate Zone is not only its moderate and adequate allowance of heat, but its contrast of seasons. Beyond the range of a vertical sun, grades of temperature change rapidly from latitude to latitude and from summer to winter. The seasons bring variety of activities, which sharply react upon one another. Manufactures were in their origin chiefly winter industries, as they still are in small isolated communities. ”

“ Physical Features.—Small though the country is, a wide variation of climate makes it peculiarly interesting. From a naturalist's point of view it can be divided into three zones. The lowest, stretching from 1000 to 5000 ft. above sea- level, may be called the tropical zone; thence to 13,000 ft., the upper limit of tree vegetation, the temperate ”

“ When the land area consists of a low plain, or of a plateau having a steep coastal strip of small width, the circulation upon it tends to be local, and to approximate to the typical “continental” climate of the temperate zones. ”

“ This direction is found to have consisted, for plants, in a march from north to south in search of more favorable regions and stations better fitted to the exigencies of acquired adaptation, as rapidly as the terrestrial temperature declined from its pristine conditions, as latitudes took on their individual characteristics, and as the arctic zone, which had been temperate, grew cooler and became more and more differentiated. ”

“ In some parts of the globe, at the present period, the line of demarcation between distinct provinces of animals and plants is not very strongly marked, especially where the change is determined by temperature, as in seas extending from the temperate to the tropical zone, or from the temperate to the arctic regions. ”

“ Its territory is generally so much elevated above the level of the sea, that it enjoys, though in the torrid zone, a comparatively salubrious and temperate climate. The heat is rarely excessive; while winter in our sense of the word, is unknown. ”

“ Though geographers have drawn a boundary line between the torrid and temperate zones, yet nature has made none; and for a considerable space on the borders, the diminution of heat is so gradual as to produce little difference in the appearance of nature. ”

“ Steppes which facilitate the historical movement, and forests which block it, are products of scant or ample precipitation. The zonal distribution of rainfall, with its maxima in the Tropics and the Temperate Zones, and its minima in the trade-wind belts and polar regions, reinforces and emphasizes the influence of temperature in determining certain great cultural and economic zones.
In equatorial regions, which have an abundant rainfall throughout the year, agriculture is directed toward fruits and roots; only in certain districts can it include cereals, and then only rice and maize. ”

“ The seasonal changes of the temperate zones stimulate man to activity. They develop him, physically and mentally. They encourage higher civilization. A cold, stormy winter necessitates forethought in the preparation during the summer of clothing, food and shelter. Development must result from such conditions. In the warm, moist tropics life is too easy; in the cold polar zones it is too hard. Near the poles, the growing season is too short; in the moist tropics it is so long that there is little inducement to labour at any special time. ”

“ The temperate zones, at a more or less distant period, will not be more habitable than the polar regions now are. Then the population of men, as well as the animals, will flow towards the latitudes which are more directly under the solar influence. ”

“ While people of the same latitude live approximately under the same temperature conditions, those of contrasted zones are subjected to markedly different influences. They develop different degrees of civilization, wealth, economic efficiency, and density of population; hence they give rise to great historical movements in the form of migration, conquest, colonization, and commerce, which, like convection currents, seek to equalize the differences and reach an equilibrium. Nature has fixed the mutual destiny of tropical and temperate zones, for instance, as complementary trade regions. ”

“ General.—The temperate zones merge into the polar zones at the Arctic and Antarctic circles, or, if temperature be used as the basis of classification, at the isotherms of 50° for the warmest month, as suggested by Supan. The longer or shorter absence of the sun gives the climate a peculiar character, not found elsewhere. ”

“ It is more probable, from what has been stated in the preceding chapters, that a slight approximation to such an extreme state of things would be sufficient; in other words, if most of the dry land were tropical, and scarcely any of it arctic or antarctic, a prodigious elevation of temperature must ensue, even though a part of some continents should penetrate far into the temperate zones. ”