FRUIT REGIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. THE FRUIT REGIONS OF THE NORTHERN UNITED BY JAMES S. LIPPINCOTT, HADDONFIELD, NEW JERSEY. THE Connection existing between the agriculture of any country and its climate is of a character too intimate to permit it to be disregarded by the cultivator. Nor has this connection ever been entirely overlooked. Man may with propriety be said to be a meteorologist by nature; so dependent is he upon the elements that to watch their changes and anticipate their disturbances becomes a necessary portion of his daily labors. Although amospheric phenomena have been subjects of interest to all classes from the carliest ages, and even in our salutations form the ever ready topic of mutual inquiry, to very recent researches are we indebted for any rational and satisfactory explanation of their general laws. While the results of geological research are everywhere appreciated by the enlightened and even by the common mind, the deductions of the meteorologist are less widely known and held in less esteem; yet it may with truth be asserted that varieties of natural conditions arising from climate do not exert a less marked influence upon man, his labor and its products, than do the geological features of the region he inhabits. When our British ancestors laid the foundation of the first permanent settlements on the shores of the New World, they were astonished to find themselves exposed to an intensity of winter cold far exceeding that which they had known at home in higher latitudes, or than that which was experienced in France and Italy on the same parallel as the colony they essayed to found. Nor were they prepared to expect the summers of the south of France and of northern Italy in conjunction with the winters of northern Germany and Sweden; yet such they found, and such do we experience to this day. The same want of identity of temperature on our opposite coasts prevails on the American and Asiatic shores of the Pacific ocean in temperate latitudes. The primary cause of these differences in temperature is doubtless the diurnal rotation of the earth from west to east. The proximate cause is to be found in the presence of vast oceans between the opposite shores, and the immediate cause is the action of counter currents of warm and cold waters and their effects upon the prevailing winds which blow over them and the adjacent land. Treating cursorily of the influence of bodies of water upon the lands by which they are bounded and to which they lie in close proximity, it is not proposed to consider the origin of these great ocean currents, but to accept them as a part of the great machinery by which their waters are made to subserve a more extended and more valuable purpose in the economy of nature, and more largely to bless mankind. In the existence of water adjacent to land and the diverse properties of these bodies, the different parts they play in receiving and diffusing solar heat, we may It is find ample cause for the diversities of climate observed on both the opposite shores of wide oceans, and in the limited regions around our inland seas. to the consideration of these phenomena exhibited upon our Atlantic coast, and upon the borders of our northern lakes, especially as they influence the capabilities of these regions for the more successful cultivation of our tender fruit, that this paper is devoted. That more enlightened views should prevail is apparent. A mistaken notion is abroad with regard to our climate, and by many it is still believed that the same winter cold or summer heat may be found by proceeding westward upon any given parallel of latitude. This error we hope to aid in dissipating. Climate is now known to be governed by many causes, among which we may include elevation, or the topography, geological features, and, more especially, the presence of lakes, which it can be shown have a marked effect in softening, to an extraordinary degree, a climate otherwise rigorous. It can also be shown that places but a few miles apart may differ widely in their adaptation to the growth of certain kinds of crops, and that a more northern district need not therefore be colder, nor a more southern warmer, than that from which the emigrant from the eastern States may have removed. DIVERSE LOCAL CLIMATES. The United States exhibits very diverse systems of climate under the same parallels of latitude. The emigrants from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, who settled Ohio and Indiana, found a climate whose extremes exceeded those they had known in the same latitude in their former homes; and the hardy pioneers from Vermont and New Hampshire found, and still find, on the borders of the lakes, on the same parallels, a softer clime, a tempered winter, a milder summer, and a longer autumn, than among the hills and mountains of their native States; while beyond the inland seas, among the forests and prairies of Wisconsin and Minnesota, they must encounter rigors of wintry cold scarcely equalled even on the northern border of their New England homes. While they find these successive changes as they move westward, they also learn that the productions vary in kind and quality; that the difficulties they encountered in attempts to extract from the soil the needful sustenance are diminished; that there are districts where fruits seem to grow almost spontaneously, and generously requite the care bestowed, and other sections where the price of successful fruit-growing is, like that of liberty, "eternal vigilance." One of the most striking peculiarities of the physical geography of the United States is the existence of a scries of great inland basins of water lying on the northern border. These ocean-lakes form the most extensive body of fresh water in existence, and comprise more than half of that upon the globe. They cover a space of nearly 100,000 square miles, and are estimated to contain 11,300 cubic miles of water. The deepest chasms in the crust of the earth are presented, perhaps, by the depressions occupied by these lakes, for, though elevated nearly 600 feet above the surface of the ocean, the bottom of some of them may be twice as far beneath it. Lakes Huron and Michigan, which occupy the deepest chasms, have been sounded to the amazing depth of 1,800 feet without discovering bottom, and their mean depth may be assumed to be about 1,000 feet. Lakes Ontario and Erie are comparatively shallow, the former being about 500 feet, while the latter, with an average of 84 feet, has at its upper reaches the trifling measure of but 30 feet in depth. The presence of these vast bodies of water in the district where the greatest winter cold would naturally be felt, is remarkable evidence of wise and beneficent adaptation of the economy of nature to the wants of man. As in insular climates, surrounded by the ocean, the temperatures of summer and winter are here moderated to a degree not generally appreciated by the residents of other regions, while proving grateful to the inhabitants, increasing their comforts, enlarging the returns of their labor, and enhancing their wealth. We may treat of the influence of the great lakes under its general and specific aspects. Climates have been divided, for more convenient reference, into excessive, rigorous or continental, and uniform or insular. The interior of the Asiatic continent, and of that of North America, offer illustrations of the first; Great Britain and the Bermudas, of the latter class. Over both the Asiatic and Amer |