Identifier: earthitsinhabita941recl (find matches)
Title: The earth and its inhabitants ..
Year: 1894 (1890s)
Authors: Reclus, Elisée, 1830-1905 Ravenstein, Ernest George, 1834-1913 Keane, A. H. (Augustus Henry), 1833-1912
Subjects: Geography
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton and company
Contributing Library: MBLWHOI Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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rfor not less than nine months. 2. Forests and savannas intermingled ; dry season of over three months. 3. Tropical flora of the uplands. Temperate Zone.—4. Evergreen forests with palms and pines ; summer rainsfrom December to March. 5. Evergreen shrubs ; few or no trees ; no palms ; winter rains. 6. Evergreen trees, with deciduous leaves; bush; pine forests; no palms;rains throughout the j^ear. 7. Prairies, steppes, and deserts ; great variations of temperature ; slightrainfall. Frigid Zone in the mtifh and on the uplands.—8. Impoverished arborescentvegetation. Thanks to its extremely diversified flora. South America has, during the lastfour centuries, given to the civilised world more plants useful for alimentary,medicinal, and industrial purposes than any other division of the globe. Thepotato, which has become the staple food of so many millions of human beings, isof South American origin, growing wild at various altitudes in the region of the * Berghauss Physikalischer Atlas.
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FLORA OF SOUTH AMEEICA. 35 Andes from Colombia to Chili. Manioc and yams, even more indispensable tocertain negro and West Indian populations of Latin America than the potato canever be to the Germans and Irish, are also indigenous in the southern section ofthe New World. From the same region also come a species of bean, the tomato,the ground-nut, cacao theohroma ( food of the gods ), the pineapple, guava,chirimoya, and many other fruits now flourishing in the tropical zone of the OldWorld. Sooner or later South America will supply the gardens of Europe with othereconomic plants not yet acclimatised, such as the quinoa, a species of chenopodium,whose seeds when ground yield a kind of bread; the arracacha root, which resemblescelery ; maté ( Paraguay tea ), which takes the place of tea in Argentina andSouth Brazil ; perhaps, also, the ceiba (cheese-tree), which attains a great sizein the Bolivar district, Venezuela. The industries have received from SouthAmerica the sap of various rub

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