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12
MEXIC AN GULF COAST ILLUSTRATED.
blasts and blinding blizzards. The spreading live oaks, the symmetrical and waxy-leaved magnolia, the dark leaved and stately pine, the holly, the cedar, and other trees, with their evergreen foliage, and the presence of flowers during the Winter months, rob that season of its uncomfortable features. The terrors of a northern winter are unknown. Aside from a few occasional days when tiie edge is felt of a severe cold wave sweeping southward from northern storm centers, the winter weather of the Coast is pleasant, and much of the time delightful. Many days during the Winter months are as perfect as June days a thousand miles northward. The winter temperature of the Coast averages 03° Fahrenheit, very seldom falling to 32°, the freezing point. During the Summer months the temperature ranges from 00° to 88°, seldom reaching 'JO0; and then it is tempered by breezes from the Gulf. The Coast is near the isothermal of 70°, the most desirable in the United States. In point of climate this strip of territory on the Gulf surpasses all others.
Let us touch briefly upon the subject of cl^n^te. “Climate,” says an eminent scientist, “is first in importance to the health and happiness of a people, for health, spirits, brain force, muscular energy, and comfort depend upon it. It is also a controling element in vegetable growths—trees, grasses, grains, fruits, in fact all vegetation.”
The causes which affect the climate of any locality are various. AVe know that its one great source is the sun, and that the special relations of the earth to that vast orb, determine climatic conditions in different localities. Latitude is the chief factor in its modification, while topography, the soil to some extent, proximity of large bodies of water, and of moisture, and of the atmosphere, exert much influence as modifiers. It must be remembered, too, that while the sun is the source, the atmosphere is the great medium and vehicle of temperature. All these are of importance in determining the advantages and desirability of any locality as a place either for a transient, residence or a permanent home.
An important factor in the same connection is that of the office and adjustments of the air in the economy of nature. The great ocean above us, the scientists tell us, with its enormous mobility rising above, the mountains, not only equalizes the temperature, but it is the medium of nearly all weather phenomena. It bears up the clouds; its movements are winds; it generates the storm, the lightning and the thunder. Besides its local and variable currents, grand earth currents are forever in motion ; these are laden for us with good or ill; they bring us dry weather or rain. Evaporation and distribution both depend on this all-pervading atmos-