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Show 84 Utah A:,cademy of Sciences, Arts and Letters These" preliminary remarks in a scientific paper might seem flippant but they are intended, first, to portray the definite sen ... perceptions of a person unaccustomed to English climate. and second, to point out the dangers of projecting the human sory response to climate into the explanations of the response of other animals and, of plants to the same climatic influences. The seem ing incongruity between the climate of Britain and the semi tropical elements of vegetation that grow there suggests that an adequate explanation of this phenomenon. unapparent on the surface. must be sought in the complexity of the several inter acting climatic factors. ... The interacting factors that help to explain nature of vegetation as well as the distribution the structural of vegetative types may be summarized as follows: CLIMATIC A. Water 1. total amount 2. seasonal distribution 3. kinds of precipitation B. Temperature 1. total thermal units 2. extremes duration of extremes 3. frost unseasonal frosts ... . ... 4. C. length of the growing season Light 1. intensity 2. quality 3. length of day D. . Air 1. humidity 2. injurious gases 3. atmospheric' pressure 4. winds A Briton in Utah experiencing for the first time the phantom of a desert mirage could hardly suffer a greater illusion than a Utahn in England who, after observing the almost daily swirl of damp fog and listening to the drip, drip, drip of water from leaf 'and branch, learns that the total precipitation in England is hardly twice that of Salt Lake City. The total of 30 inches of rainfall there seems paltry in accounting for such luxuriance and verdure rampant everywhere. Certainly the ecological dictum that the total available water and not the total amount of pre- |
