Vegetation

Before the coming of the Europeans, almost half the territory of the country was taken up by forests, covering the whole of the Appalachian region in the east and the Cordillera slopes in the west. Considerable areas in the Central Plains were covered with prairies. By the 1970’s almost half the forests had been cut down, and large territories in the prairies had been ploughed. In the north-east of the country and in the region of the Great Lakes there are mixed forests of pine, fir, silver-fir, lime and ash. Further south they are replaced by broad-leaf forests of oak, maple, tulip-tree and plane-tree; still further south, below north latitudes 35-39 degrees, there appear magnolia, laurel, and other evergreen plants.

In the Central Plains the tall-grass prairie vegetation gradually passes (beyond the 100 degrees west meridian) into dry steppe, which is ploughed only partly and mostly used as pastures.

In the Great Basin there are deserts and semi-deserts.

The vegetation in the Cordilleras is represented by coniferous forests, and at the height of 3000 meters by alpine meadows.

In California one can come across sequoia, or red-wood, a tree that attacks many tourists because it reaches up to 100 meters high and lives for many hundreds of years.

The prevailing vegetation in the dry Southwest is brushwood of sclerophyllous shrubs and trees.

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Animal life of the country

North-american marmot

The animal life of the continental United States includes the white-tailed deer, antelope, bighorn sheep, mountain goat, black bear and others.

Some important fur-bearers are red and grey foxes, mink, snow-shoe hare, various squirrels and others.

The great destruction which early Europeans brought about in the vegetation of North America was followed by great changes in the native animal world. Such animals as the bison and the wolf are quite few today. Among the birds, one can hardly find the passenger pigeon in America at the present time.

North America’s grasslands were once filled with great numbers of pronghorns. Today they are few. It is one of the most truly American of all the animals found on this continent. It has never left North America. It is a far older animal than the bison. The pronghorn has physical characteristics of both the antelope and the goat. The running animal reaches the speed of 55 miles (90 km) an hour.

However, animals like coyotes and opossums have remained and they are found now even in greater numbers than before the coming of the Europeans. Different food, especially from the plants man grows, is the reason for this.

The opossum is the only North American animal which has a bag in which its children are carried. The babies get into the bag after their birth.

The opossum knows how it must act under different conditions. It is able “to play possum”. It can make use of almost any dark hole to hide. Its food is mainly of fruits and berries. When it finds too many other animals around, it can live on any other food or change its way of life.

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The opossum of today is larger than it was 80 million years ago. It has a tail which can work as a fifth hand in the tree.

A few centuries ago, animals were an important part of the economy. So they were, for example, for the early colonists. At that time animals gave food and clothes. Wild animals were many because the hunters’ weapons were primitive and the number of hunters was not very great.

But as time went on the weapon became better. Such animals as reindeer, the elk, and especially the beaver and the sable were killed in great numbers. Later, as settlements reached across the Great Plains, many bisons were destroyed. There are still some wild animals in the northern forests and the mountainous west, but they are too few.

Though animal life in North America was rich, there were no animals which man had domesticated except the dog. Wild horses which Europeans first saw in the Great Plains were born of the horses brought by the earliest colonists. Cows, sheep, pigs were also brought to North America from the Old World. Not one of them was native.

North-american opossum