1396 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



biological terms, of organism interacting with environment. It 

 is simplest and most convenient to begin with the environment; 

 and for this one needs a convenient survej^ with space enough 

 to be a true world sample; yet not too large for convenient 

 survey. Here then the world's relief gives the clue; especially for 

 our western Europe, with its many river valleys, and plains not 

 too large for ordinary limited vacation experience. Witness, for 

 instance, if we review the east coast of Britain southwards, the 

 Dee, the Tay, the Forth, each ranging from mountains and foot- 

 hills to more of fertile plain; and so for Tweed and Tyne, and 

 southwards to the Thames. As we come southwards, the pro- 

 portion of hill country diminishes, that of plain increases, so 

 with corresponding occupational and social change as well, as from 

 hunting, pastoral, and poor crofting regions to more and more pre- 

 ponderance of farming. With such notion of regions in their solid 

 relief once clearly obtained, our valley section develops to island 

 section, and this again into the wider world; so thus a simple 

 standard diagram is arising in our minds, readily adaptable in detail 

 to each region, be this great or small. 



Given then this broad outline, its adaptation to each river valley 

 — above named or no, and smaller or greater than these — is an easy 

 matter; more of mountains and hills for Dee and less for Tay, less 

 still for Thames, so more of gently sloping plain in that. So next 

 this section is of Scotland, from West to East, yet readily adaptable 

 to Wales and England, to Norway and Sweden; and so from 

 Switzerland down the Rhone to Marseilles, or across Italy. The like 

 further afield; say from short Greek valleys to the long ones of 

 Nile and Euphrates, of Indus, or Ganges, or Yang-tse-Kiang, or 

 across America; again mostly from short valleys towards West and 

 longer towards towards south like the Mississippi, or east for the 

 Amazon. For broad visualisation of the great world, in its relief and 

 its place-units, our suggested diagram is the simplest and clearest 

 possible beginning; although, so far as geographers, we need next 

 to develop all these, as did Reclus in his Geographie Universelle and 

 towards his long dreamed "Great Globe", that colossal model in 

 true relief, once and again on the way to be realised, as it will be 

 some day, since needed complement to Zeiss's planetarium. 



Our simple outline section next, of course, needs geologic develop- 

 ment, but here again something of local knowledge is not hard to 

 find, nor to enrich with some notion of mineral products, as from 

 flints to ores, even to jewels or gold, yet now, above all, of soils, 

 from intractable to- most cultivable. Similarly, a natural vegetation 

 picture is indispensable, for which ecological maps are becoming 

 finished enough to help us; yet, broadly, they are all variants of 

 Humboldt's first diagrams; since downwards from snowy heights, 

 though lichens and mosses with struggling herbaceous plants of 



