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The desert and the volcano, for instance, have often been regarded in that light. But we have lately been assured that both are needed for the supply of atmospheric dust, which is a necessary condition of the rain-fall; so that they are really essential to life upon the planet.
The months of March and April rack very low in their rain-fall in comparison with any point situated along the same thermal lines; while May is scarce up to the average, but yet sufficient to supply the seeds and grasses with all the moisture required.
I believe I was as white as my pocket handkerchief; and if fright could turn a person's hair grey, I had been sufficiently alarmed to make myself eligible for any quantity of walnut pomade. Fortunately the summer had proved rather a dry one, and the swamp was not so wet as it would have been after a heavy rain-fall.
In Switzerland, for example, grass-grounds on the very borders of glaciers are freely irrigated, and on the Italian slope of the Alps water is applied to meadows at heights exceeding 6,000 feet. The rain-fall is about the same in Piedmont, though the number of days in the year classed as "rainy" is said to be but twenty-four in the former province while it is seventy in the latter.
This furnishes a most striking commentary on this particular season for the localities named, and warrants the statement that the first two-thirds of it can be considered a continuation of the dry climate which we have now traced from about the middle of September to the first of May, a period of seven and one-half months, in which the rain-fall is but a third of the entire quantity precipitated throughout the whole year; while that of the entire year, even, is seen to be but a trifle over the half of that falling over any portion of the variable district, occupying so large a portion of the whole United States.
The choice of a site is of first importance, for the planter must find a locality having a moist climate with an evenly distributed rain-fall where the temperature throughout the year does not fall below seventy degrees Fahrenheit, and where there is protection from the wind. There must also be, of course, access to a steady labor supply and a convenient shipping port.
When we recall the effect produced on the soil even of a thick wood by a rain-fall of one inch, we find it hard to believe that two hundred and forty times that quantity, received by the ground between early spring and autumn, would not keep it in a state of perpetual saturation, and speedily convert the forest into a bog.
With May, spring begins in the island, rain and thunder are of almost daily occurrence, and the temperature rises high, with little daily variation. The period from November to April is called the dry season by contrast. On a mean of seven years the rain-fall at Havana in the wet season has been observed to be 27.8 inches, of the dry months, 12.7, or 40.5 inches for the year.
The daily discharge of a quantity of aqueous vapor corresponding to a rain-fall of one inch and a fifth into the cool air of the forest would produce a perpetual shower, or at least drizzle, unless, indeed, we suppose a rapidity of absorption and condensation by the ground, and of transmission through the soil to the roots and through them and the vessels of the tree to the leaves, much greater than has been shown by direct observation.
In time of severe drought the Dieri of Central Australia, loudly lamenting the impoverished state of the country and their own half-starved condition, call upon the spirits of their remote predecessors, whom they call Mura-muras, to grant them power to make a heavy rain-fall.
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