In Olympia, at the head of Puget Sound, latitude 49°, bouquets containing fifteen or twenty varieties of flowers are gathered from the open grounds to ornament the Christmas tables, and the inhabitants are obliged to send to the Aleutian islands, eighteen hundred miles away, to get their supply of ice for summer use. The northern end of the island of Vancouver, in latitude 51°, has the same winter temperature as Norfolk, Va., in latitude 37°.
That isothermal lines stretched across the continent do not coincide with parallels of latitude is a fact well established, and yet is more generally accepted than understood. This twofold influence affects so potently the conditions of life in California, that some consideration of the subject, in the way of a preliminary, seems quite in order. TEMPERATURE and rainfall are the essential elements of climate.
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