EXERCISES


_A._ Complete the partial outline given for the paragraph below. Which of
the illustrations might be omitted from a recitation? For which can you
furnish different illustrations?


Mountain ranges have great influence upon climate, political geography,
and commerce. Many of them form climatic boundaries. The Cordilleras of
western America and the Scandinavian mountains arrest the warm, moist,
western winds which rise along those great rock barriers to cooler
altitudes, where their water vapor is condensed and falls as rain, so that
the country on the windward side of the mountains is wet and that on the
leeward side is dry. Mountain chains stretching east and west across
central Asia protect the southern part of the continent from frigid arctic
winds. The large winter tourist traffic of the Riviera is due to the
mountains that shield this favored French-Italian coast from the north and
northeast continental winds, giving it a considerably warmer winter's
temperature than that of Rome, two and a half degrees farther south. As
North America has no mountain barriers across the pathway of polar winds,
they sweep southward even to the Gulf of Mexico and have twice destroyed
Florida's orange groves within a decade. Mountain ranges are conspicuous
in political geography because they are the natural boundary between many
nations and languages, as the Pyrenees between France and Spain, the Alps
between Austria and Italy, and the Himalayas between Tibet and India.
Mountains sometimes guard nations from attack by the isolation they give,
and therefore promote national unity. Thus the Swiss are among the few
peoples in Europe who have maintained the integrity of their state.
Commercially, mountains are of great importance as a source of water,