a particular account of the climate of the United States, we refer to the articles RAIN and TERRESTRIAL TEMPERATURE. It is remarkable for wide transitions of cold and heat, rain and drought, except in the peninsula of Florida, where the tem perature varies but 12° Fahr., and western Oregon and Washington territory, where the climate is like that of England. With few exceptions, the summers are hot, both n. and s. the thermometer rising at times to 110° Fahr., and along the northern range of states sinking to —20°, and even sometimes as low as —40°. The whole Atlantic coast has a winter temperature 10° lower than that of western Europe in the same latitude. Thus, at New York, in the latitude of Madrid. the Hudson river is frozen, and the harbor at times filled with floating ice. The causes modifying the climates of the different por tions of the states chiefly arise out of the physical features; of which the Rocky moun tains, the gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic, and the lake system in the n. are the most promi nent. On the w., from the shores of the Pacific to the Cascade mountains, one of the most important ranges of mountains in America, the climate resembles that 'of Great Britain more closely than that of any other country in the world, being mild and humid, with frequent showers at all seasons. But the great valley lying between the Cascade and the Rocky mountains is almost entirely a rainless district, because the westerly winds are drained of their moisture iu crossing the Cascade mountains before arriving there. In winter, it is covered with snow, but iu summer is dry and arid. Owing, however, to the copious streams poured down from the melting snow, it presents abund ant facilities for irrigation, so that its capabilities and resources are great, if they were properly developed. The country e. of the Rocky mountains depends for its rain on the gulf of Mexico; and the rainfall there is distributed most in the low plains, and least on the plateaux and mountains. Hence over this extensive district southerly winds are warm and moist, and westerly and northerly dry and cold. The result is rapid alterna tions of temperature, such as are never experienced in western Europe, the temperature having frequently a range in the course of a day of 50° or 60'. In the New England states, the northerly and easterly winds are cold, moist, and chilly, accompanied with frequent fogs; otherwise the climate resembles that of Great Britain. The climate of the states surrounding the great lakes in the n. is mild and moist in summer as compared with the other northern states; but iu winter, when the lakes are frozen over, a degree of cold is experienced greater, absolutely and relatively, than anywhere else in the states. This excessive cold is caused by the country being exposed in the n. to the full sweep of the polar current from the n.; but more particularly to its low-lying situation, thus form ing, as it were, a vast basin into which is poured from all sides the cold, and therefore heavy, currents of air chilled by terrestrial radiation during the winter season.—The health of the United States varies with climate, elevation, etc. Swamps and river-bot toms in some regions, especially the more fertile, are malarious. The rice-swamps of Georgia and South Carolina are fatal to whites, but not to negroes. In vast tracts of new country, even the rolling and hilly, the disturbance of the soil causes intermittent fevers. Diseases of the lungs prevail in the northern and middle states, bilious fevers in the southern; in the western, intermittent and rvinittent bilious. In 1850, the average mortality was 1 in 72, varying rather widely in different regions, modified not only by climate, but by the presence of large towns, and by immigration an emigration. The deaths in Vermont, a rural New England state, were 1 per cent; in Florida, the most southerly, though increased by consumptive patients from the n., 1.06; Georgia, 1.09; Alabama, 1.18; Maine and Indiana, 1.30; Ohio and Texas, 1.46; Missouri, 1.50; Massa chusetts, with numerous manufacturing_towns,_1.95; Louisiana, with yellow fever, and a large floating unacclimated population, 2.31. Probably, no portion of the world is more salubrious than Vermont, and the eastern slope of the Alleghanies, Florida, the upper country around the gulf of Mexico, the head-waters of the Mississippi, California, and Oregon.
United States are rich in mineral productions. Coal is found in every state except Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New Jersey, Delaware, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Nevada. The area of the coal-measures is estimated at 800,000 sq.miles. The whole extent of the coal area in the
United States has been divided into four principal coal-fields or tracts—viz., the Great Central Alleglianian or Appalachian coal-field, extending from Tuscaloosa in Alabama, through eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, western Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsyl vania, and reappearing in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. This field has been com puted to cover within the United States an area of 50,000 to 60,000 sq.m., of which about 40,000 sq.m. are considered workable area. It is subdivided into eight minor divisions, productive of bituminous coal. The second coal field occupies the greater part of Illinois and Indiana, and in extent is nearly equal to the first. A third field covers a large portion of Missouri; and the fourth the greater part of the state of Michi gan. The Chesterfield bituminous coal-field, a detached district of small area near Richmond, Va., contains the oldest-worked collieries in America, and for many years furnished the only supply of coal for the sea-board towns. The production of 1873-74 was 45,413,340 tons, three-fourths of which were produced in Pennsylvania alone. Con nected with the coal-fields are the petroleum springs, which form a source of great wealth to many localities. The exports of petroleum to Britain alone, in 1875, amounted to £770,488. See NAPHTHA. Beds of rich marl are found in several of the eastern states, and in many, nitrates and carbonates of soda and potassia, gypsum, and marble of great variety and some of rare beauty. Iron is found everywhere, from the pure metal in mountain masses, to bog-ore; and in many places in close proximity to coal. Lead exists in rich deposits in Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, and Iowa. Copper is found in several states, and in great quantities of ores of 71 to 90 per cent. on the borders of lake Superior. Zinc exists in considerable quantities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Tin has been found in Maine and California. Silver is found in lead and copper, and in rich silver mines in New Mexico, Arizona, California, Utah, and Nevada. Gold is found in small quantities in the eastern states; in larger deposits in Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia; and in great quantities in California, Oregon, Colorado, Nevada, and Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, and Montana territories. There are also found plating in small, and mercury in large quantities in California, osmium and iridium in Oregon,cobalt in North Carolina and Missouri, and nickel in Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
Agriculture.—With an abundance of fertile land, agriculture holds the first place in the national industry. In 1870, 407,735,041 acres were occupied as farms, of which the cultivated land was 188,921,099 acres. According to the agricultural returns for 1871, the acreage of the principal crops was as follows: Hay, 10,009,032; maize or Indian corn, 34,091,137; wheat, 19,943,893; oats, 8,365,800; potatoes, 1,200,912; buckwheat, 413,015; barley, 1,177,666; tobacco, 356,762; rye, 1,069,531. The other crops were sugar, rice, peas, and beans, hemp, flax, etc. The average size of farms, nearly all held by their cultivators in fee-simple, is 153 acres. The quantities of the chief agri cultural productions of 1871 were: Indian corn, 991,898,000 bushels; wheat, 230,732,400 bushels; oats, 255,743,000 bushels; potatoes, 120,461,700 bushels; barley, 26,718,500 bushels; rye, 15,355,500 bushels; buckwheat, 8,328.700 bushels; hay, 22,239,400 tons; tobacco, 263,196,100 lbs. ; cotton, 3,100,000 bales. In 1869-70, 2,159,516 acres of the public land were sold for cash, mostly at the ordinary price of one dollar and a quarter an acre; 515,360 acres were bought with military warrants, and 3,698,910 acres were entered under the law of congress, which gives a homestead after five years' occupation, while upward of one million and a half were granted to agricultural schools, railways, Indian reservations, or individual states. Vast quantities of land have been impoverished, exhausted, and abandoned; but improved systems of agriculture are promoted by the government, and widely introduced. Wheat and maize are • grt yTn in all the states; cotton, s. of lat. 37°; cane-sugar, in Louisiana, Texas, and Florida; hemp and tobacco, chiefly between lat. 34° and..40*; rice, in South Carolina and Georgia; figs and oranges flourish in the gulf states; and peaches, grapes, melons, and other delicious fruits are abundant and in great perfaction s. of lat. 43°. At the census of the United States, taken in 1870, there were in the country 8,690,219 horses, 28,074,532 cattle, 28,477,951 sheep, and 25,184,540 hogs.