strenuous American life of ours vacations are essential. We are
learning, too, that the love of beauty is one of Nature's
greatest healers. Regions like the coast of Maine and Puget
Sound, where rugged land and life-giving ocean interlock, are
worth untold millions because of their inspiring beauty. It is
indeed marvelous that in the latitude of the northern United
States and southern Canada so many circumstances favorable to
human happiness are combined. Fertile soil, level plains, easy
passage across the mountains, coal, iron, and other metals
imbedded in the rocks, and a stimulating climate, all shower
their blessings upon man. And with all these blessings goes the
advantage of a coast which welcomes the mariner and brings the
stimulus of foreign lands, while at the same time it affords rest
and inspiration to the toilers here at home.



CHAPTER IV. THE GARMENT OF VEGETATION

No part of the world can be truly understood without a knowledge
of its garment of vegetation, for this determines not only the
nature of the animal inhabitants but also the occupations of the
majority of human beings. Although the soil has much to do with
the character of vegetation, climate has infinitely more. It is
temperature which causes the moss and lichens of the barren
tundras in the far north to be replaced by orchids, twining
vines, and mahogany trees near the equator. It is rainfall which
determines that vigorous forests shall grow in the Appalachians
in latitudes where grasslands prevail in the plains and deserts
in the western cordillera.