IT IS NOT without reason that the staple salutation and customary inquiry are concerning the weather and one's health. In all ages, in every clime and in every stage of society, the primary basis of converse and the preliminary discourse include these two topics. This fact has been the subject of a vast deal of criticism, but neither sneer nor logic nor philosophy can put it down, because these topics are the essential foundations of existence, the fundamental factors in climate and life. Weather prophets will always have consideration ; whatever will promote life will have attentive audience. No advance of civilization can take men far away from their physical nature and the conditions in which it can best thrive. There are, therefore, such relations between the two, climate and life, relations so exacting, so certain, that in principle they constitute a law, which if found, with its limitations and modifications, must prove of supreme importance.

This is as true in vegetable as in animal life. The life principle is essentially the same in plant and animal. We have kinship with the growing plant. We mourn over the untimely frost. It extinguishes life, a life so common to both that its loss is to us an affliction which almost approaches sympathy. We have no sympathy for stones. Plants, according to their species, demand a congenial clime; so does man, though his intelligence enables him, in a measure, to surmount the disabilities of an adverse one. He can construct a house and build a fire. To a degree he can make his own climate. Without this power of modification he would die as surely as the plant away from its proper home.

Notwithstanding the faculty which so largely distinguishes him from the vegetation around him, the zones conspire against his highest efforts, and fill his blood with elements so different, and put into his physical constitution impulses so diverse, that the varieties of mankind approximate those of any known plant. What is that subtle influence, that in spite of himself holds a mastery over him and changes his nature ?

Vegetable life is more at the mercy of the climate. We say that man is cosmopolitan because of his power to modify his surroundings. Vegetation, not having this power, has a limit much more restricted. A thorough knowledge of this limit, not simply of plant existence, but of its highest production, is worthy of all that observation can find, experience demonstrate and science bestow. Given a plant useful for man and beast, with a knowledge of its characteristics of growth and maturity, where shall it be planted ? Can we so far get a insight into the relations of climate to life that we can, a priori, determine the habitat of any given plant or animal ?

Mere observation will not determine it. Nature has a way of crushing out the life not adapted to any given locality, but the study of a single map in her ample book in search of what she can produce in the region delineated, judging only from what she does produce, would make short shrift of the student who limits his knowledge to observation. Because the potato and tobacco plants were found in America and not in Europe, it did not follow that Nature forbade their cultivation in the Eastern Hemisphere. Rabbits were plentiful in England, but none were found in Australia. Nature did not produce them there; but that did not prevent them from becoming, when transported, a pest that millions of pounds sterling have failed to exterminate. They thrive there far better than in their supposed habitat. It is said that there are no snakes in Ireland. If so, is there any reason (barring the edict of St. Patrick) why they should not live there ? These few illustrations out of many are cited to show the delusive character of facts when isolated from a consideration of conditions.

When all the conditions in these cases, as well as others of a like nature, are known, there is found to be ample reason for the non-production, without impeaching the general law that plants and animals will not exist in an unfavorable climate.

Why are there no trees on our vast western prairies east of the arid belt ? Some insist that tree planting on them will never be a success, for the reason that Nature would have placed them there if adapted to their growth. Others again contend that fires have for ages swept over them and kept the forest in check; others that the soil is too loose and not of a character fitted for tree life. The fires are largely diminishing, and the soil, especially in the eastern part, is from cultivation becoming compacted, and yet there is no essential natural change in the forest area. Others maintain (the most probable cause) that the heavy winds are destructive to all vegetation except the lowly kind that can bend to the storm or lie beneath its mighty path. If the latter is the chief cause, it but further exemplifies the law of adaptation. The United States could well afford to pay a large sum to be assured of the true cause. Is the cause permanent or incidental ? There is some evidence of a change, in that as the area of effort to grow trees increases, the better is the growth assured. Man may in time change the conditions, but the years will be heavy before a sufficient wind-break can be placed in the horizon of the blizzard.

That is,"perhaps," for I do not know.

If observation alone cannot determine the adaptability of vegetation to locality, experiment can. But experience is a dear school. In a large measure it is empirical - governed by chance. When experiment is guided by an accurate knowledge of the constitution of the subject and a conception of the conditions necessary for success, coupled with a full understanding of the soil and climate to be tried, the outcome may be predicted. Disregard of all these conditions has wasted the substance of many an experimenter and brought down many high hopes.

Most of the disagreements of the world come from half statements, or from a half conception of full statements. So most of our failures come from a partial misunderstanding of requirements of success. If we knew all the facts in regard to the constitution of a plant, and well understood the soil and climate, we might order its transportation and propagation with as much certainty as the astronomer can predict the orbit of a planet. The most learned can be misled, as well as the most ignorant, by the want of reliable data. In 1856, the learned Joseph Henry, for many years the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, whose repute was justly worldwide, wrote, "However large our domain really is, and however inexhaustible it may have been represented to be, a sober deduction from the facts which have accumulated during the last few years will show that we are nearer the confine of the healthy expansion of our agricultural operations over new ground than those who have not paid definite attention to the subject could readily imagine.