CLIMATE AND MOVEMENT.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVIII, Issue XVIII, 1 May 1897, Page 535

CLIMATE AND MOVEMENT.

‘ The most important physical factor in determining lines of movement,’ says a well-known man of science, ‘ has been climate. Speaking broadly, migration follows the parallels of latitude, or, more precisely, the lines of equal mean temperature, and not so much, I think, of mean annual heat as of mean winter heat. Although the inhabitants of cold climates often evince a desire to move into warmer ones, they seem never to transfer themselves directly to one differing greatly from that to which they are accustomed ; while no people of the tropics has ever, so far as I know, settled in any part of the temperate zone. • There is one instance of a North European race establishing itself on the southern shores of the Mediterranean —the Vandals in North Africa, and the Bulgarians came to the banks of the Danube from the still sterner winters of the middle Volga. But in the fewcases of northward movement, as in that of the Lapps, the cause lies in the irresistible pressure of stronger neighbours; and probably a sim.lar pressure drove the Fuegians into their inhospitable isles. ' The tendency to retain similar climatic conditions is illustrated by the colonisation of North America. The Spaniards and Portuguese took the tropical and sub tropical regions, neglecting the cooler parts. The French and the English settled in the temperate zone, and it was not till this century that the country toward the Gulf of Mexico began to be occupied by incomers from the Carolinas and Northern Georgia. When the Scandinavian immigration began it flowed to the Northwest. and has filled the States of Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Dakotas.’