42 



NATURE 



[September io, 1914 



science. If we have not grown less destructive since, 

 at any rate we have shown some signs of penitence, 

 and science has come to our aid in the work of repara- 

 tion. Governments and associations have directed their 

 attention to protecting woodland and reafforesting 

 tracts which have been laid bare. The Touring Club 

 of France, for instance, I am told, have taken up the 

 question of the damage done by destruction of trees 

 by men and sheep in Haute Savoie, and they assist 

 reclamation by guidance and by grants. In England, 

 under the auspices of Birmingham University and 

 under the Presidency of Sir Oliver Lodge, the Midlands 

 Reafforestation Association is planting the pit mounds 

 and ash quarries of the Black Country with trees which 

 will resist smoke and bad air, alders, willows, poplars, 

 carrying out their work, a report says, under a com- 

 bination of difficulties not to be found in any other 

 country. Artificial lakes and reservoirs again, such 

 as I shall refer to presently, are being made woodland 

 centres. In most civilised countries nowadays living 

 creatures are to some extent protected, tree planting 

 is encouraged by Arbour days, and reserves are formed 

 for forests, for beasts and birds, the survivors of the 

 wild fauna of the earth. Some lands, such as Greece, 

 as I gather from Mr. Perkins' report, are still being 

 denuded of trees, but as a general rule the human 

 conscience is becoming more and more alive to the 

 immorality and the impolicy of wasting the surface 

 of the earth and what lives upon it, and is even 

 beginning to take stock as to whether the minerals 

 beneath the surface are inexhaustible. Therefore I 

 ask you now to consider man as the lord of creation 

 in the nobler sense of the phrase as transforming 

 geography, but more as a creative than as a destructive 

 agency. 



How far has the agency of man altered, and how 

 far is it likely to alter, the surface of the earth, the 

 divisions and boundaries assigned by Nature, the 

 climate, and the production of the different parts of 

 the globe ; and, further, how far, when not actually 

 transforming Nature, is human agency giving Nature 

 the go-by? It should be borne in mind that science 

 has effected, and is effecting transformation, partly 

 by applying to old processes far more powerful 

 machinery, partly by introducing new processes alto- 

 gether; and that, as each new force is brought to 

 light, lands and peoples are to a greater or less extent 

 transformed. The world was laid out afresh by coal 

 and steam. A new readjustment is taking place with 

 the development of water power and oil power. Lands 

 with no coal, but with fine water power or access to 

 oil, are asserting themselves. Oil fuel is prolonging 

 continuous voyages and making coaling stations 

 superfluous. But of necessity it is the earth itself 

 which gives the machinery for altering its own 

 surface. The application of the machinery is con- 

 tributed by the wit of man. 



The surface of the earth consists of land and water. 

 How far has human agency converted water into land 

 or land into water, and how far, without actually 

 transforming land into water and water into land, is 

 it for practical human purposes altering the meaning 

 of land and water as the great geographical divisions? 

 A writer on the Fens and South Lincolnshire has told 

 us : " The Romans, not content with appropriating 

 land all over the world, added to their territory at 

 home by draining lakes and reclaiming marshes." 

 We can instance another great race which, while 

 appropriating land all over the world, has added to it 

 by reclaiming land from water, fresh or salt. The 

 traveller from Great Britain to the most distant of 

 the great British possessions. New Zealand, will find 

 on landing at Wellington a fine street, Lambton Quay, 

 the foreshore of the old beach, seaward of which now 



NO. 2341, VOL. 94] 



rise many of the city's finest buildings on land re- 

 claimed from the sea ; and instances of the kind might 

 be indefinitely multiplied. Now the amount of land 

 taken from water by man has been taken more from 

 fresh water than from sea, and, taken in all, the 

 amount is infinitesimal as compared with the total 

 area of land and water ; but it has been very consider- 

 able in certain small areas of the earth's surface, and 

 from these small areas have come races of men who 

 have profoundly modified the geography and history 

 of the world. This may be illustrated from the 

 Netherlands and from Great Britain. 



Motley, at the beginning of "'The Dutch Republic," 

 writes of the Netherlands : " A region, outcast of 

 ocean and earth, wrested at last from both domains 

 their richest treasures." Napoleon was credited with 

 saying that the Netherlands were a deposit of the 

 Rhine, and the rightful property of him who controlled 

 the sources ; and an old writer pronounced that 

 Holland was the gift of the ocean and of the rivers 

 Rhine and Meuse, as Egypt Is of the river Nile. The 

 crowning vision of Goethe's Faust is that of a free 

 people on a free soil, won from the sea and kept for 

 human habitation by the daily effort of man. Such 

 has been the story of the Netherlands. The Nether- 

 lands, as a home for civilised men, were, and are, the 

 result of reclamation, of dykes and polders. The 

 kingdom has a constantly changing area of between 

 12,000 and 13,000 square miles. Mr. Marsh, in his 

 book, set down the total amount gained to agriculture 

 at the time he wrote "by dyking out the sea and by 

 draining shallow bays and lakes" at some 1370 square 

 miles, which, he says, was one-tenth of the kingdom; 

 at the same time, he estimated that much more had 

 been lost to the sea — something like 2600 square miles. 

 He writes that there were no Important sea dykes 

 before the thirteenth century, and that draining inland 

 lakes did not begin until the fifteenth, when windmills 

 came into use for pumping. In the nineteenth century 

 steam pumps took the place of windmills, science 

 strengthening an already existing process. Between 

 1815 and 1855, 172 square miles were reclaimed, and 

 this included the Lake of Haarlem, some thirteen miles 

 long by six In breadth, with an area of about seventy- 

 three square miles. This was reclaimed between 1840 

 and 18=3. At the present time, we are told, about 

 forty square miles are being reclaimed annually in 

 Holland ; and meanwhile the Dutch Government has 

 in contemplation or in hand a great scheme for drain- 

 ing the Zuyder Zee, which amounts to recovering from 

 the ocean land which was taken by It In historic times 

 at the end of the fourteenth century. The scheme Is 

 to be carried out In thirty-three years and Is to cost 

 nearly sixteen million pounds. The reclamation is to 

 be effected by an embankment across the mouth of 

 this Inland sea over eighteen miles long. The result 

 will be to add 815 square miles of land to the kingdom 

 of the Netherlands, 750 square miles of which will be 

 fertile land, and in addition to create a much-needed 

 freshwater lake with an area of ^;^7 square miles ; 

 this lake Is to be fed by one of the mouths of the 

 Rhine. 



London Is partly built on marsh. The part of Lon- 

 don where I live, Pimlico, was largely built on piles. 

 A little way north, in the centre of fashion. Is Belgrave 

 Square, and here a lady whom I used to know had 

 heard her grandfather say that he had shot snipe. 

 Take the CIt\- of London In the strict and narrow 

 sense. The names of Moorfields and Fensbury or 

 Finsbury are familiar to those who know the City. 

 Stow, in his Survey of London, more than three 

 hundred years ago, wrote of "The Moorfield which 

 lleth without the postern called Moorgate. This field 

 of old time was called the Moor. This fen or moor 



