PKODUCED BY MAN. 771 



ne font pas croire,' has been made to the effect that man's inter- 

 ference has been potent, even over the sea, to an extent which 

 men of science have not usually claimed, and poets have denied 

 to be possible. Mr. G. P. Marsh, the author of a well-known work 

 on 'The Origin and History of the English Language,' 1862, as 

 well as of the highly interesting work on physical geography 

 which appeared in 1864, under the title of ^ Man and Nature, or 

 Physical Geography as modified by Human Action,' and as a 

 second edition, ten years later, under the title of ' The Earth as 

 modified by Human Action : a new edition of Man and Nature,' 

 suggests in this latter work that the phosphorescence of the 

 Mediterranean, unknown to, or at any rate scarcely noticed by 

 the ancient writers, may have been greatly increased since their 

 days through human action in the way of extirpating the whale. 

 ' Is it not possible/ writes Mr. Marsh ^, ^ that in modern times the 

 animalcula which produce it (the phosphorescence of the Medi- 

 terranean, the most beautiful and striking of maritime wonders) 

 may have immensely multiplied, from the destruction of their 

 natural enemies by man, and hence that the gleam shot forth by 

 their decomposition or by their living processes, is both more 

 frequent and more brilliant than in the days of classical antiquity?' 

 In a more utilitarian spirit Middendorff, in his ' Sibirische Reise ^,' 

 points out that a continuance of the wasteful destruction of the 

 whalebone whale in the northern seas will render it impossible to 

 utilise for man's profit the innumerable small Crustacea and mollusca 

 of the Polar seas which that whale converts into train oil ! The 

 profligate inconsiderate slaughter again by the Kolushes of the 

 sea-cow, Retina Sielleri, a sirenian ' whale ' of the region of Behring's 

 Straits, which lived upon sea-weed, has reduced these savages to 

 the necessity of using this self-same sea-weed for manuring their 

 potatoes, which useful vegetable, however, gives them a much 

 less savoury and sustaining food than was manufactured, so to say, 

 for their forefathers in the organism of the sea-cow they extirpated. 

 It is perhaps a little ungracious to point out that the most elegant 

 of these three correlations and interdependencies is not so definitely 

 demonstrable as the other two. In the first place, it may be 

 objected as regards Mr. Marsh's suggestion, that the Mediter- 



1 Loc. cit, 1st ed. p. 114; 2nd ed. p. 104. 

 Band iv. t. 2. p. 848, 1867. 



3^^ 



