Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 54.djvu/461

Rh Forests and even single trees have, therefore, a marked influence upon the surrounding atmosphere, especially during the summer, and they evidently tend to equalize temperature, preventing extremes both in summer and winter. Hence they become of immense value as sanitary agencies in preserving equality of climatic conditions.

It is believed by some vegetable physiologists that trees exert this power through their own inherent warmth, which always remains at a fixed standard both in summer and winter. "Observation shows," says Meguscher, "that the wood of a living tree maintains a temperature of from 54° to 56° F., when the temperature stands from 37° to 47° F. above zero, and that the internal warmth does not rise and fall in proportion to that of the atmosphere. So long as the latter is below 67° F., that of the tree is always highest; but, if the temperature of the air rises to 67° F., that of the vegetable growth is the lowest." Since, then, trees maintain at all seasons a constant mean temperature of 54° F., it is easy to see why the air in contact with the forest must be warmer in winter and cooler in summer than in situations where it is deprived of that influence.

Again, the shade of trees protects the earth from the direct rays of the sun, and prevents solar irradiation from the earth. This effect is of immense importance in cities where the paved streets become excessively heated, and radiation creates one of the most dangerous sources of heat. Whoever has walked in the streets of New York, on a hot summer's day, protected from the direct rays of a midday sun by his umbrella, has found the reflected heat of the pavement intolerable. If for a moment he passed into the dense shade of a tree, he at once experienced a marked sense of relief. This relief is not due so much to the shade as to the cooling effect of the vaporization from the leaves of the tree.

Trees also have a cutaneous transpiration by their leaves. And although they absorb largely the vapor of the surrounding air, and also the water of the soil, they nevertheless exhale constantly large volumes into the air. This vaporization of liquids is a frigorific or cooling process, and when most rapid the frigorific effect reaches its maximum. The amount of fluid exhaled by vegetation has been, at various times, estimated with-more or less accuracy. Hales states that a sunflower, with a surface of 5.616 square inches, throws off at the rate of twenty to twenty-four ounces avoirdupois every twelve hours; a vine, with twelve square feet of foliage, exhales at the rate of five or six ounces daily. Bishop Watson, in his experiments