88 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [1892. 



acceleration, owing to the increase of population, to exportation, 

 and to the constant new applications of steam power to old and 

 new purposes, and that during the last half of the period it would 

 decline more irregularly, and upon the whole more quickly, in con- 

 sequence of the completed exhaustion of the more densely popu- 

 lated coal fields, the increased transportation required to distribute 

 the fuel from the more distant ones, and the consequent growing 

 scarcity and higher prices. But take any reasonable rate of 

 increase we may, based on even a partial continuation of existing 

 facts, and distribute it how we may over the century, and the 

 general result will be about the same, viz: practical exhaustion in 

 little more than three generations. 



To such minds as may incline to the acceptance of these conclu- 

 sions as a fair deduction from facts some of which are known and 

 others derived from cautious and reasonable estimates, but of which 

 only a portion are at present susceptible of proof, it will be at once 

 apparent that certain consequences, both economic and physical, 

 must ensue of the very highest importance to the human race and 

 to all animal life : since the latter, except as regards the domesti- 

 cated and 23rotected species, tends to increase or decline in inverse 

 proportion to that of man, the universal enemy. The former class 

 of consequences belongs rather to the province of the statesmen and 

 the publicist, though it may be pertinent to refer in passing to the 

 general popular conviction with which such reflections are often 

 brushed aside, i. e. that some new " force " or " power " of Nature is 

 likely to be discovered and harnessed into human service long 

 before the happening of an event that is admitted to be at least a 

 century distant. 



But if on examination it be found that there exists no intelligent 

 ground for such expectation, then, however agreeable and consola- 

 tory, it must be taken as mere optimism, ready to find ease in any 

 baseless and visionary possibility rather than face a fact which a& 

 all see, must sooner or later deprive our race of its most useful and 

 effective asset, and materially change all the conditions of civiliza- 

 tion, including its capacity to sustain population. 



Now on attempting any such examination almost the first cir- 

 cumstance to be noted is, that as no new or jDreviously unknown 

 " force " has ever yet been discovered, it is very improbable, — if not 

 demonstrably impossible — that any such force can exist in Nature 

 without evidence of its presence. The existence and potentialities 



