THE HUMAN OR PRESENT PERIOD 941 



decades, supplemented by swift land-transportation and electric 

 communication, and is rapidly involving the whole race in a cosmo- 

 politan movement. Almost the whole world is already in daily 

 communication, and almost all the races are more or less habitually 

 intermingling by travel and trade. That this is to become more 

 and more habitual until the whole race shall be in constant inter- 

 communication, is not to be questioned. There will then have 

 been inaugurated the most marked period of cosmopolitanism, in 

 all senses of the term, which the world has ever witnessed. What 

 all this will ultimately mean for the race we do not venture to 

 predict. 



Man as a geological agency. The earlier geologists were in- 

 clined to regard man's agency in geological progress as rather 

 trivial, perhaps because physiographic geology, in which his influ- 

 ence is chiefly felt, was then less cultivated than other phases with 

 which he has little to do. The fact probably is that no previous 

 agent, in an equal period of time, has so greatly influenced the life 

 of the land, or the rate of land-degradation, as man has since the 

 present agricultural epoch was well established. That this influ- 

 ence will be increased during coming centuries seems clear. The 

 flora is rapidly passing from that which had been evolved by 

 natural agencies through the ages, to that which man selects for 

 cultivation or preservation, together with that which has taken 

 advantage of the special conditions he furnishes. With the further 

 progress of this movement, the native floras seem destined to an 

 early extinction. The same may be said of the native faunas. 

 The favored animals, under man's care, flourish beyond precedent, 

 while the others, so far as they are within his reach, are suffering 

 rapid declines that look toward extinction. The life of the sea 

 is less profoundly affected than that of the land, but even that 

 does not escape modification. The most pronounced exceptions to 

 man's dominance, and those that bid fair to contest his supremacy 

 longest, are found in organisms too minute to be easily controlled 

 by him, and in organisms that, quite against his wish, flourish on 

 the conditions he furnishes. But even the accelerated evolution 

 of these organisms is a part of the profound biological revolution 

 which attends man's dominance. 



