which from the upper cliffs of Profile Mountain is a remarkable human profile, The Great Stone Face, immortalized by Nathaniel Hawthorne; here, too, is the Franconia Flume, a narrow upright fissure, 60 ft. in height, with beautiful waterfalls.
The whole White Mountain region abounds in deep narrow valleys, romantic glens, ravines, flumes, waterfalls, brooks and lakes. The part of the state which lies N. of the White Mountains is occupied by ridges and wide rolling valleys, the ridges rising occasionally to heights of 2000 ft. or more. South of the mountains a plateau-like surface—a part of the New England Uplands—broken by residual mountains, or “monadnocks” (a term derived from Mount Monadnock, 3186 ft. high, near the S.W. corner of the state) and lenticular hills, or drumlins, but having a general S.E. slope toward the sea, extends from the intervales of the Connecticut river to the E. border of the Merrimac Valley. Between the Merrimac Valley and the sea is the only low surface in the state; a considerable portion of this region is less than 500 ft. above the sea, but even here are numerous ridges 1000 ft. in height or more, and small drumlins. The seashore, about 18 m. in length, is for the most part a low sandy beach; here and there, however, especially to the northward, it is somewhat rocky, and to the southward are two bluffs. The only harbour is at Portsmouth near the mouth of the Piscataqua. About 9 m. from the shore are the bleak and nearly barren Isles of Shoals, nine in number, a part of which belong to New Hampshire and a part to Maine.
Extending from Mount Monadnock in Cheshire, the S.W. corner county, to the headwaters of the Connecticut river in the N.E. corner is a water-parting, W. of which the state is drained southward into Long Island Sound by the Connecticut and its tributaries and E. of which it is drained south-eastward into the Atlantic Ocean principally by the Merrimac in the S., the Saco and the headwaters of the Merrimac in the White Mountain region, and the Androscoggin in the N. The Piscataqua is a tidal estuary fed chiefly by the Salmon Falls, Lamprey and Exeter rivers. The headwaters of the rivers are for the most part mountain streams or elevated lakes; farther on their swift and winding currents—flowing sometimes between wide intervales, sometimes between rocky banks—are marked by numerous falls and fed by lakes.
The lakes and ponds, numbering several hundred, were formed by glacial action and the scenery of many of them is scarcely less attractive than that of the mountains. The largest and most widely known is Lake Winnepesaukee on the S. border of the White Mountain region; this is about 20 m. long and from 1 to 8 m. wide, is dotted by 274 islands, mostly verdant, and has clear water and a rather level shore, back of which hills or mountains rise on all sides. Among the more prominent of many others that are admired for their beauty are Squam, New Found, Sunapee and Ossipee, all within a radius of a few miles from Winnepesaukee; Massabesic farther S.; and Diamond Ponds, Umbagog and Connecticut lakes, N. of the White Mountains. The rivers with their numerous falls and the lakes with their high altitudes furnish a vast amount of water power for manufacturing, the Merrimac, in particular, into which many of the larger lakes, including Winnepesaukee, find an outlet, is one of the greatest power-yielding streams of the world.
Flora.—Except on the summits of the higher mountains New Hampshire was originally an unbroken forest of which the principal trees were the white pine, hemlock, sugar maple, yellow birch, beech, red oak, and white oak in the S., red spruce, balsam, and white birch on the upper mountain slopes, and red spruce, white pine, sugar maple, white spruce and white cedar in the other parts of the N. The primeval forests have nearly disappeared, but much of the N. third of the state and many abandoned farms in the S. have become reforested with much the same trees, except that on the lower levels in the N. yellow birch, sugar maple and beech have to a considerable extent supplanted spruce, white pine and hemlock, and that wherever forest fires have occurred there is much bird cherry, yellow birch and aspen. The butternut, hickory and chestnut are common nut-bearing trees in the S. Among indigenous fruit-bearing trees, shrubs and vines the state has the bird cherry, black cherry, blueberry, cranberry, raspberry, blackberry, gooseberry, strawberry, grape and black currant; and conspicuous among a very great variety of shrubs and flowering plants are the rose, dogwood, laurel, sumac, holly, winterberry, trilliums, anemones, arbutuses, violets, azaleas, eglantine, clematis, blue gentians, orange lilies, orchids, asters and golden rod. The summits of some of the mountains are too high for trees and above belts of dwarf spruce, balsam and birch they are clothed chiefly with sandworts, diapensia, cassiope, rushes, sedges and lichens.
Fauna.—The N. section of the state was originally a favourite hunting-ground of the Indians, for here in abundance were the moose, caribou, deer, wolf, bear, lynx, otter, beaver, fox, sable, mink, musk-rat, porcupine, wood-chuck, ruffed grouse and pigeon. These were rapidly reduced in number by the white man, the wild pigeons are extinct, and the moose, caribou, bear, wolf, lynx and beaver have become rare, but, under the protection of laws enacted during the latter part of the 19th century, deer and ruffed grouse are again quite plentiful. Rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, woodcock and quail are also common game. Many of the lakes and rivers have been stocked with trout and salmon or bass; some, with smelt; the fresh waters of the state also contain pickerel, perch, pouts, eels, suckers, dace, sunfish and shiners. In the S. half of New Hampshire are many song birds belonging to the Alleghany faunal area; in the N. part many others belonging to the Canadian faunal area. The hermit thrush, veery, song sparrow, red-eyed vireo, bunting, warbler and wren are among the song birds of the forests.
Climate.—The winters are usually long and severe, and the summers cool and salubrious, but the diversity of surface together with unequal distances from the sea cause marked variations for the different regions. The mean annual temperature ranges from about 42° F. at only moderate elevations in the White Mountain region and farther N. to 47° F. at low altitudes in the S.E. The greatest extremes of temperature occur in the deep mountain valleys where it sometimes rises to 102° F. or above, in summer, and falls to −38°F. or below in winter; higher up on the mountains it is never so warm and along the sea-coast both extremes are considerably less. The highest recorded winter mean is 25° F., at Nashua in the lower valley of the Merrimac, and at Durham near the sea-coast; the lowest recorded winter mean is 18° F., at Bethlehem 1470 ft. above the sea in the White Mountain region; the highest recorded summer mean is 69° F. at Nashua, and the lowest recorded summer mean is 64° F. at Bethlehem. The mean annual precipitation for the entire state is about 40 in.; it is 43 in. at Nashua, 45·3 in. at Durham, and perhaps still more on the E. slopes of the mountain ranges, but it is only 37·7 in. at Bethlehem in the N.W. part of the mountain region and only 35·5 in. at Stratford in the upper valley of the Connecticut. The distribution is quite even throughout the year, but summer and autumn are slightly more wet than winter and spring. Among the mountains and in the N. part of the state the annual fall of snow is from 7 to 8 ft., but in the S.E. corner it is little more than one-half that amount. The prevailing winds are generally N.W., but in the vicinity of the sea they are S.E. during summer.
Agriculture.—Fertile soil in New Hampshire is confined largely to the bottom-lands of the Merrimac and Connecticut rivers, where on deposits of glacial drift, which are generally quite deep in the southern half of the state, there is considerable alluvium. In the south-eastern section is also a moderately productive soil derived largely from the disintegration of slate. Elsewhere south of the mountains the surface soil is mostly hard pan or till, this being deepest on the drumlins. In the mountain region the soil is mostly a sandy loam composed of disintegrated granitic gneiss and organic matter; on the lower and more gentle slopes as well as in the valleys this is generally deep enough for a luxuriant vegetable growth but on the upper and more precipitous slopes it is thin, or the rocks are entirely bare.
Farms in the more sterile parts of New Hampshire were abandoned when the depleted soil and the old methods of agriculture made it impossible for owners or tenants to compete with western farmers. This abandonment led in 1889 to the adoption by the state Board of Agriculture of measures which promoted the development of the state, especially the central and northern parts, as a summer resort. Abandoned farms were advertised as suitable for country homes, and within fifteen years about two thousand were bought; and the carriage roads were improved, game preserved and the interests of visitors studied. Agriculture on the farms still operated was now greatly modified, and the production of vegetables, fruits, dairy products, poultry and eggs was largely substituted for the production of cereals. The total acreage of all land included in farms increased from 3,459,018 acres in 1890 to 3,609,784 acres in 1900, or from 60% to 62·6% of the total land area of the state, but the improved portion of this decreased during the decade from 1,727,387 acres to 1,076,879 acres, or from 49·9% to 29·8%; in no other state east of the Mississippi river was so small a proportion of the farm land improved at the close of the decade, although in Florida it was only a trifle larger. The total number of farms increased from 29,151 in 1890 to 29,324 in 1900, and the average size increased from 119 acres to 123·1 acres, but as a result of the more intensive form of agriculture, farms containing less than 50 acres increased from 8188 in 1890 to 8764 in 1900, and those containing 50 acres or more decreased during this decade from 20,963 to 20,560. Of the total number of farms in 1900, 26,344, or 89·8%, were operated by owners or part owners, 1639 by cash tenants and 546 by share tenants.
Hay is the principal crop; in 1909 the acreage was 640,000 acres and the yield was 621,000 tons. The total acreage of cereals decreased from 88,559 acres in 1879 to 61,498 acres in 1889, and to 42,335 acres in 1899; during the latter decade that of Indian corn
