THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



The Scientific Fifteenth Irrigation Congress 



By Edgar L. Larkin, Director of Lowe Observatory, California. 



The great congress held in Sacramento was of a 

 strong scientific cast. To me it seemed like a regular 

 session of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science. Or like the World's Congress of Arts 

 and Sciences in the World's Fair at St. Louis. The 

 scientific papers presented were of an order so high 

 that they would be accepted and placed on the pro- 

 gramme of any great national society or academy of 

 exact science. And the facts placed before this repre- 

 sentative convention were startling indeed, and should 

 be heeded by every American citizen, and this without 

 delay. It has long been known to geologists that the 

 coal supply of the world is limited. That it must soon 

 fail and that other sources of heat energy will have to 

 be sought in the near future. Quite near within one 

 hundred years. The alarm bell is now ringing in the 

 anthracite regions of Pennsylvania. Deeper and deeper 

 sink the shafts and the layers and beds of the precious 

 coal grow thinner with descent. I saw in a paper re- 

 cently that the cost of mining had recently increased 

 from 40 to 50 per cent. Double the number of men 

 are now required to mine the same amount of coal ow- 

 ing to thin layers and great depth. From various lines 

 of arguments, by different speakers, it was shown that 

 one century more will wipe out the world's stock of 

 coal, at present rates of consumption. Geologists are 

 of the same opinion, unless new and unexpected discov- 

 eries of coal bearing strata are made soon. From all 

 estimates I have been able to find, the store of petrol- 

 'eum will also vanish in about a hundred years, at pres- 

 ent rates of use. Spouters are waning and pumps are 

 increasing. Natural gas is greatly reduced in pressure 

 and it is not probable that it will hold out during fifty 

 years. But oil and gas are being wasted at a frightful 

 rate. Human beings on a speck of a world 93,000,000 

 miles from the sun, are deliberately throwing away 

 their supply of carbon the life of the earth. At the 

 World's Fair in St. Louis, they had in the palace of 

 minerals, heaps of coal, iron and other materials re- 

 quired to build a warship. The piles contained the 

 one one-thousandth part of each. But this quantity 

 was startling to behold. Totally wasted, for fighting 

 is absolutely viseless and worse a high crime. But the 

 coal wasted in constructing these mighty engines of 

 malignant death is as nothing compared to that re- 

 quired to run the deadly navies of the world. Moun- 

 tains of coal are poured into their hateful furnaces. 

 Here is the statement of science to the fighters : Stop, 

 or freeze to death. Will they listen to reason in the 

 future ? History shows that they have not in the past. 

 And at the exposition a cry for the great fertilizer, 

 nitrogen, rose in clear notes above the din. It was 

 shown by the ablest electricians how to take this life for 

 plants out of the air. Why show these machines? Be- 

 cause it is well known to geologists that the world's sup- 

 ply of nitrates is rapidly running low. But to secure 

 nitrogen from the atmosphere by the aid of electricity 

 is costly. Listen to the wail for carbon ; hear it in the 

 distance now. With inconceivable sorrow, our children 

 of the second generation hence will look back upon us 

 and heap reproach upon our heads for wasting the 

 earth's store of life-giving carbon. 



MAN HATH NO PERMANENT CITY. 



It is known to scientific men that man cannot long 

 exist on this planet without vast supplies of heat. Face 

 this fact. All natural stores of carbon will soon be ex- 

 hausted. This is settled. Each year polar ice draws a 

 little nearer to the equator. In time it will encroach on * 

 the temperate zones, and crowd humanity along toward 

 the torrid zones. But there is not land enough in this 

 belt to supply food plants. Stay at home in the tem- 

 perate zones and millions will freeze; migrate to the 

 torrid and millions more will starve. These are facts 

 to face. Man must secure heat in some way or disap- 

 pear from his home the earth. Byron's concept of the 

 last man committing suicide on the equator is no fable. 

 There are three ways of securing heat when coal, oil 

 and gas come to an end. First, store heat directly from 

 the sun during days to use at night. Second, secure heat 

 from electricity; and third, cover all that part of the 

 earth's surface not required for food plants with for- 

 ests. Enough energy from the sun falls on the deck of 

 every steamship, when the sky is clear, to run the en- 

 gines. But the greatest electricians have not invented 

 a method of conserving this energy into the form of 

 heat. The problem may never be solved of running a 

 ship by day from solar energy or of storing it to run 

 the boat at night. If this cannot be done, then elec- 

 tricity and carbon in trees remain. 



A STUPENDOUS WORLD PROBLEM. 



The chief forester of the United States stated that 

 at the present criminal waste of forest they would be 

 destroyed within thirty years ! An incredible thing is . 

 going on. This great nation is asleep. Private soulless 

 corporations are seizing all the forests in the United 

 States and binding the whole country hand and foot in 

 slavery. One man owns enough rich forest lands to 

 make a state. He should not own an acre. The trees 

 belong to the people. Something has to be done. Let 

 the people awaken to this great danger. Lumber will 

 soon be of such enormous price that no poor man can 

 hope to own a house. 



The trees of the world must be quadrupled and that 

 before many years, if man is to have carbon. Our de- 

 scendants will justly hold us in derision if we let all 

 forests get into the clutches of conscienceless corpora- 

 tions. This is not sensational, but a rigid fact. Steam- 

 ers can be run with wood for fuel and all buildings 

 heated with it likewise. But see the enormous quantity 

 needed. Every desert and semi-desert on earth must be 

 irrigated, and all irrigation schemes, ancient and mod- 

 ern, will be as child's play compared to these colossal 

 works. 



To ye fighters, stop your murderous work, put your 

 energy and capital into irrigation, raise trees wherever 

 a tree can grow or die. It is known to every anthro- 

 pologist that Nature has set the decree of death on hu- 

 manity, if war will not end. And let the race die if it 

 is to fight forever. Good riddance. 



ELECTRICITY FROM GRAVITY. 



I listened for a week to hundreds of papers in the 

 World's Congress of Mechanical and Civil Engineers at 



