Fer 23, 1883.] 



• KNOWLEDGE • 



119 



WASTE OF THE WORLD'S FORESTS.* 



"IT "'HEX the forests of such a country as Cyprus were 

 * y destroyed, said ilr. Thistleton Dyer, in a discussion 

 in the Britisli Society of Arts, it was like a burned cinder. 

 Many of the West Indian Islands are in much the same 

 condition, and the rate with which the destruction takes 

 place when once commenced is almost incredible. In the 

 island of Mauritius, in 1835, about three-fourths of the soil 

 was in the condition of primeval forest, viz., 300,000 acres: 

 in 1879, the acreage of woods was reduced to 70,000 ; and 

 in the next year, when an exact survey was made by an 

 Indian forest officer, he stated that the only forest worth 

 speaking about was S.^jOOO acres. Sir William Gregory 

 says that in Ceylon, the eye, looking from tlie top of a 

 mountain in the centre of the island, ranged in every 

 direction over an unbroken extent of forest. Six years 

 later the whole forest had disappeared. The denudation of 

 the forests is accompanied by a deterioration in the soil ; 

 and the Rev. R. Ablmy, who went to Ceylon on the eclipse 

 expedition, calculated, from the percentage of solid matter 

 in a stream, that one third of an inch per annum was being 

 washed away from the cultivated surface of the island. In 

 some colonies the timber was being destroyed at such a rate 

 as would soon lead to economic difficulties. In Jamaica, 

 nearly all the timber required for building purposes has 

 already to be imported. In New Brunswick, the hemlock- 

 spruce is rapidly disappearing, one manufacturer in Boies- 

 town using the bark of one hundred thousand trees every 

 year for tanning. In Demerara, one of the most important 

 and valuable trees, the greenheart, is in a fair way of being 

 exterminated. They actually cut down small saplings to 

 make rollers on which to roll the large trunks. In New 

 Zealand, Captain Walker says he fears that the present 

 generation will see the extermination of the Kauri pine, 

 one of the most important trees. All these facts show that 

 this is a most urgent question, which at no distant date 

 will have to be vigorously dealt with. 



EYOLUTIOIs" OF LIFE.f 



THERE is a difficulty in commenting liere on the work 

 of one who appears so often in these pages, because 

 any commendation of such work reads as indirect praise of 

 BjfoWLEDGE. Yet we feel that we ought not on that 

 account, to pass o\er such treatises as those which Mr. 

 Grant Allen and Dr. Wilson have recently produced. In 

 particular, such a work as Dr. Wilson's " Chapters on Evo- 

 lution," presenting in every page evidence of careful labour, 

 crowded with interesting matter, and relating to a subject 

 about which every man of sense and intelligence wishes to 

 be well informed, is one which ought to receive the notice 

 which it well deserves. 



There can be no doubt that the modem theory of 

 biological evolution is greatly misunderstood by that rather 

 mysterious abstraction — the general reader. Perhaps this 

 has been because so much nonsense has been written about 

 it, as well by those who wish to believe in it, but know very- 

 little about it, as by those who reject it, and know nothing. 

 Quite early, the tendency of the theory was seen to Ijo 

 towards the widest possible generality. It was recognised 

 that man could not possibly be excluded from the law of 

 evolution. Those who had believed in his nobler origin 

 from the dust of the earth were pained. They objected to 



• From the P"pular Science Monthly. 



t " Chapters on Evolution." By Dr. AxiIrew Wilsox, Author of 

 " Leisure Time .Studies," &c. With 237 TUustrations. (Chatto & 

 Windus, London.) 



a doctrine, according to which man, instead of having been 

 made originally a little lower than the angels, had risen from 

 only a little higher than the beasts of the field, — instead of 

 being made in tlie likeness of Goil, must be regarded rather as 

 having imagined God after his own likeness. It is truethenew 

 doctrine presented man as having risen — and likely, there- 

 fore, to rise still higher — while the old presented him as 

 having fallen grievously, having, from being next door to an 

 angel, and quite in the likeness of God (though, for a slight 

 temptation, or none, held out by an objectionable reptile, 

 he so offi'nded as to merit death — not, before, a part of the 

 plan), he had become a wretched creatui-e, " deceitful 

 above all things, and desperately wicked." So that, on the 

 whole, the new teaching was a more cheerful one, apart 

 from religious hopes and fears, — which do not belong 

 to our inquiry here. In a scientific sense, too, the 

 new doctrine about the origin of man seemed to 

 accord somewhat better with the evidence than the 

 old. It had always seemed a little difficult to under- 

 stand, or even to conceive, the formation of man out of dust; 

 his formation out of nothing would have been a compara- 

 tively simple matter ; but that something should be neces- 

 sary, and that something dust, had been perplexing. So 

 had the origin of woman — speaking always in the scientific 

 sense. And again, the possible existence of animal life, 

 either in human beings or in the beasts of the field, for 

 ever, had troubled the students of physiology, who found 

 it not readily conceivable. The new doctrine, indeed, was 

 not without its difficulties. It gave no account of the 

 beginning of life on the earth or anywhere else. It 

 carried back our thoughts over infinite time — or time, to us, 

 practically infinite ; for no mind can conceive such a 

 period as a million years, and the new doctrine I'ecognised 

 tens of millions of years. It was as iaipressive in regard 

 to time as the teachings of astronomy with regard to space. 

 It presented the domain of uniform law as infinite 

 in time, so far as our conceptions are concerned. And 

 somehow many who had looked with complacency at 

 the existence of development in limited regions of space 

 and over short periods of time — had even, in these, found 

 evidence of the goodness of the laws of nature — were 

 pained, almost horrified, at the evidence of the perfection 

 of those laws affijrded by their fitness to reign throughout 

 practically infinite space, and during a practical eternity of 

 time. As men had erred in their estimate of space, 

 mistaking a point for the universe ; as they had erred in 

 mistaking a mere instant for all time ; so, it seemed, 

 they had utterly underestimatwl the range, in space and 

 time, of the uniform operations of nature. Slany objected 

 to this introduction of infinity from the scientific side. It 

 was so much easier to understand a little tract of earth 

 and water, with the heavens arched overhead, the sun, 

 moon, and stars set in them for signs, and everything set 

 going in a short time, and set right at short intervals. 

 Only, iinfortunately, the earth's crust and the host of 

 heaven alike tell a story inconsistent with this convenient 

 narrowing of God's domain in space and time. 

 ' We doubtless owe to the natural pain and grief with 

 which the new doctrine was received, the wild ideas which 

 were associated with it, and are still rife. The absurdities 

 quoted at page 104, from Mr. I)e Witt Talmage's foolish 

 sermon, though, of course, an exaggeration of the nonsensi- 

 cal ideas commonly entertained about evolution, afibrd a 

 fair sample of their nature. There is a picture — a great 

 favourite with anti-development lecturers — which fairly 

 illustrates the .supposed nature of the rival theories. It is 

 calli'd "Our First Parents"; on one side a statuesque 

 Adam and Eve (without the serpent, and looking as 

 though forbidden fruit would be quite safe with them), on 



