566 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913. 



and we have as yet little experience of a satisfactory kind to guide 

 us. The geographer, if he will, can here be of considerable service 

 to the engineer. 



In the same connection, the development of the agricultural area 

 supplying an industrial center offers many difficult problems in rela- 

 tion to what may be called accessory products, more especially those 

 of a perishable nature, such as meat and milk. In the case of meat 

 the present position is that much land which may eventually become 

 available for grain crops is used for gi-azing, or cattle are fed on 

 some grain, like maize, which is difficult to transport or is not satis- 

 factory for bread making. The meat is then temporarily deprived 

 of its perishable property by refrigeration, and does not suffer in 

 transport. Modern refrigerating machinery is elaborate and com- 

 plicated, and more suited to use on board ship than on any kind of 

 land transport; hence, the most convenient regions for producing 

 meat for export are those near the seacoast, such as occur in the 

 Argentine or the Canterbury plains of New Zealand. The case is 

 similar to that of the accessible coal field. Possibly the preserving 

 processes may be simplified and cheapened, making overland trans- 

 port easier, but the fact that it usually takes a good deal of land to 

 produce a comparatively small quantity of meat will make the diffi- 

 culty greater as land becomes more valuable. Cow's milk, which in 

 modern times has become a " necessary of life " in most parts of the 

 civilized world, is in much the same category as meat, except that 

 difficulties of preservation, and therefore of transport, are even 

 greater. That the problem has not become acute is largely due to 

 the growth of the long-transport system available for wheat, which 

 has enabled land round the great centers of population to be devoted 

 to dairy produce. If we are right in supposing tliat this state of 

 things can not be permanent the difficulty of milk supply must 

 increase, although relieved somewhat by the less intense concentra- 

 tion in the towns; unless, as seems not unlikely, a wholly successful 

 method of permanent preservation is devised. 



In determining the positions of the main centers, or, rather, in 

 subdividing the larger areas for the distribution of towns with their 

 supporting and dependent districts, water supply must be one of the 

 chief factors in the future, as it has been in the past; and in the 

 case of industrial centers the quality as well as the quantity of water 

 has to be considered. A fundamental division here would probably 

 be into districts having a natural local supply, probably of hard 

 water, and districts in which the supply must be obtained from a 

 distance. In the latter case engineering works of great magnitude 

 must often be involved, and the question of total resources available 

 in one district for the supply of another must be much more fully 

 investigated than it has been. In many cases, as in this country. 



