limate,
fauna and flora. California has the highest land and the lowest land of
the United States, the greatest variety of temperature and rainfall, and
of products of the soil.

[Illustration: Map of CALIFORNIA and NEVADA]

_Climate._--The climate is very different from that of the Atlantic
coast; and indeed very different from that of any part of the country
save that bordering California. Amid great variations of local weather
there are some peculiar features that obtain all over the state. In the
first place, the climate of the entire Pacific Coast is milder and more
uniform in temperature than that of the states in corresponding latitude
east of the mountains. Thus we have to go north as far as Sitka in 57
deg. N. lat. to find the same mean yearly temperature as that of
Halifax, Nova Scotia, in latitude 44 deg. 39'. And going south along the
coast, we find the mean temperature of San Diego 6 deg. or 7 deg. less
than that of Vicksburg, Miss., or Charleston, S.C. The quantity of total
annual heat supply at Puget Sound exceeds that at Philadelphia,
Pittsburg, Cleveland or Omaha, all more than 500 m. farther south;
Cape Flattery, exposed the year round to cold ocean fogs, receives more
heat than Eastport, Maine, which is 3 deg. farther south and has a
warmer summer. In the second place, the means of winter and summer are
much nearer the mean of the year in California than in the east. This
condition of things is not so marked as one goes inward from the coast;
yet everywhere save in the high mountains the winters are comparatively
mild. In the third place, the division of the year into two seasons--a
wet one and a dry (and extremely dusty) one--marks this portion of the
Pacific Coast in the most decided manner, and this natural climatic area
coincides almost exactly in its extension with that of California; being
truly characteristic neither of Lower California nor of the greater part
of Oregon, though more so of Nevada and Arizona. And finally, in the
fourth place, except on the coast the disagreeableness of the heat of
summer is greatly lessened by the dryness of the air and the consequent
rapidity of evaporation. Among the peculiarities of Californian climate
it is not one of the least striking that as one leaves the Sacramento or
San Joaquin plains and travels into the mountains it becomes warmer, at
least for the first 2000 or 3000 ft. of ascent.

Along both the Coast Range and the Sierra considerable rainfall i