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The United Kingdom

а) Geographical position. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is situated on British Isles – a large group of islands lying off the north-western coast of Europe and separated from the continent by the English Channel and the Strait of Dover in the south and the North Sea in the east.

The British Isles consist of two large islands – Great Britain and Ireland – separated by the Irish Sea, and a lot of small islands, the main of which are the Isle of Wight in the English Channel, the Angle sea and the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea, the Hebrides – a group of islands off the north-western coast of Scotland, and two groups of islands lying to the north of Scotland: the Orkney Islands and the Shetland Islands.

Historically the territory of the United Kingdom is divided into four parts: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The total area of the United Kingdom is 244 square kilometres.

б) Climate. Great Britain enjoys the humid and mild marine West-Coast climate with warm winters and cool summers and a lot of rainfall throughout the year.

The prevailing winds blow from the south-west. As these winds blow from the ocean, they are mild in winter and cool in summer, and are heavily charged with moisture at all times. As they approach the mountainous areas near the west coasts, they rise up the mountain slopes. Their temperature drops, which causes condensation of moisture in the form of rain. Therefore the wettest parts of Britain are those areas where high mountains lie near the west coast: the western Highlands of Scotland, the Lake District and North Wales. The eastern part of Britain is said to be in the rain-shadow, as the winds lose most of their moisture in their passage over the highlands of the west.

All parts of the British Isles receive rain at any time of the year. Still autumn and winter are the wettest seasons, except in the Thames district, where most rain falls in the summer half of the year. Oxford, for example, has 29 per cent of its rain in summer and only 22 per cent in winter.

As to temperature, Great Britain has warmer winters than any other district in the same latitude. It is due in large measure to the prevalence of south-west winds. Another factor is Gulf Stream, which flows from the Gulf of Mexico and brings much warmth from the equatorial regions to north-western Europe.

в) Agriculture. The South of England has a lot of gardens and orchards. People grow apples, pears, cherries, plums and other fruits and different berries there. But many parts of highland Britain have only thin, poor soils. In most of these areas the farmers have cultivated only valley lands and the plains where the soils are deeper and richer.

Farming land is divided into fields by hedges or stone walls. Most of countryside England is agricultural land, about a third of which is arable and the rest is pasture.

Sheep-, cattle- and dairy-farming are also important branches of Great Britain’s economy. Chicken farms produce a great number of chickens and eggs for the population. Great Britain produces a lot of wool. Woollen industry is developed in Yorkshire. British woollen products are exported to other countries.

Примечание: подробнее о развитии животноводства в США читайте текст “Farms in the USA” (упр. 12, стр. 23 – 24, Lesson 5, «Методические разработки на английском языке по курсу «Животноводство», часть 1).

The United States of America

а) Geographical Position. The United States territory consists of three separate parts, different in size, natural features, level of development and population:

• The main part, the United States proper, with an area of 7,800,000 square kilometres. It borders on Canada in the north and on Mexico in the south. It is washed by the Pacific Ocean in the west, the Atlantic Ocean in the east, and the Gulf of Mexico in the south-east;

• Alaska, which occupies the north-western part of the continent of North America, including a lot of islands;

• Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean.

б) Climate. The United States of America occupying a large territory, it is natural that a great diversity of climatic conditions can be observed in different parts of the country. Besides, being crossed by mountain ranges from north to south, the country is unprotected from blasts of cold air from the north and warm air from the south. This is the cause of great fluctuations of temperature.

The northern part of the Pacific coast enjoys a moderate climate of temperature zones with a cool summer and a rather warm (for these latitudes) winter without a permanent snow cover and an abundant rainfall on the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains (3000 – 6000 mm a year).

The southern part of the Pacific coast (California) has a Mediterranean climate: a hot, cloudless and dry summer and a cool and rainy winter with the mean temperatures of 20 – 25 °C in summer and 5 – 10 °C in winter. The rainfall is rather small (400 – 600 mm a year).

The climate on the Atlantic coast is continental-marine with cool summers and rather warm winters with a permanent snow cover in mountainous regions. Further to the south the climate gets warmer, with warmer winters and hotter summers, gradually passing into the monsoon tropical climate in the extreme south of Florida. The temperatures here are comparable to those on the Pacific coast of California, but the rainfall is heavier and occurs mostly in summer.

The plains of the Appalachian Mountains enjoy a continental climate, with warm summers and cool winters with a permanent snow cover.

The plateaus and tablelands of the Cordilleras have an extreme continental climate with very cold winters and hot summers. The highest temperature is observed in the Death Valley (sometimes up to 56°C).

в) Agriculture. Agriculture is very wide spread above all in the prairie regions, where wheat and other grain crops are grown. By the 1970s almost half the large territories in the prairies had been ploughed. Otherwise dry steppe is ploughed only partly.

Cotton is grown to great extend in the south in the Mississippi Valley, tobacco in Maryland and Virginia. California is famous for its fruit plantations.

Cattle farming develop in the west of the country. Dry steppe is mostly used as pasture. There are such animals as Rocky Mountain goats and sheep on the Cordillera slopes. Poultry farming is widely spread in the country-side near all cities.

Примечание: подробнее о развитии животноводства в Великобритании читайте тексты “Farms in England” (упр. 12, стр. 19 – Lesson 4), “Dairy Farms in East Lancashire” (упр. 12, стр. 24 – 25, Lesson 5) – см. Методические разработки на английском языке по курсу «Животноводство», часть 1.