66 SCIENCE 
they poison the water, they poison the air, they 
poison the growing crops (p. 104). . . . Here are 
a people with standards, unquestionably civilized 
—peaceable, industrious, filial, polite, faithful to 
their contracts, heedful of the rights of others. 
Yet their lives are dreary and squalid, for most 
of their margins have been swept into the hopper 
for the production of population. Two coarse 
blue cotton garments clothe them. In summer the 
children go naked and the men strip to the waist. 
Thatched mud hut, no chimney, smoke-blackened 
walls, unglazed windows, rude unpainted stools, 
a grimy table, a dirt floor where the pig and the 
fowls dispute for scraps, for bed a mud kang 
with a frazzled mat on it. No woods, grass, nor 
flowers; no wood floors, carpets, curtains, wall- 
paper, table-cloths nor ornaments; no books, pic- 
tures, newspapers nor musical instruments; no 
sports nor amusements, few festivals or social 
gatherings. But everywhere children, naked, 
sprawling, squirming, crawling, tumbling in the 
dust—the one possession of which the _ poorest 
family has an abundance, and to which other pos- 
sessions and interests are fanatically sacrificed 
(pp. 104-105). . . . Utility reigns supreme; and 
all it comes to is to feed a dirty, sordid, opium- 
sodden people living in hovels, wearing coarse, 
faded blue garments, crippling their women by 
foot-binding, and letting their boys and girls run 
about filthy and naked! No music, art, books, 
poetry, worship, refined association, allure of chil- 
dren, charm of women or glory of young manhood 
in its strength. No discussions, no politics, no 
heed to events in the great world. Life on a low 
plane, the prey of petty cares and mean anxieties. 
Infinite diligence, great cleverness and ingenuity, 
abundance of foresight and thrift, few destructive 
passions; still, a life that is dreary and depressing 
to look upon (p. 287). 
Such is the picture. It is this enormous 
pressure of population that has so reduced the 
standard of living, and that makes the Chinese 
people a drove of pigs, rather than a collec- 
tion of human beings. It is true that they 
give reasons for it, and that it forms part of 
their time-honored customs, so that perhaps it 
may rather be ascribed to error than to ignor- 
ance. The result is the same. 
The next most striking fact that looms up 
is the complete improvidence of the Chinese. 
By this I mean their failure to look forward 
to the future or to consider the effect of their 
[N.S. Vou. XXXV. No. 889 
social system upon coming generations. It 
may be called social, as distinguished from 
individual improvidence. Of the latter, as 
Dr. Ross shows, they are not guilty. But they 
seem to have no social consciousness what- 
ever. That has been true of other peoples at 
their stage of culture, but on account of the 
density of population in China the results 
have been more disastrous there than else- 
where. The great “Indo-Germanic” migra- 
tion of which we hear so much, by which cen- 
tral and western Asia were depopulated, was 
doubtless largely due to the exhaustion of the 
natural resources by man’s reckless individual- 
ism, but evidence is accumulating of the grad- 
ual drying up of these regions as a planetary 
process, which may be general all over the 
world. This, however, appears to have been 
inappreciable in eastern Asia, and there is still 
abundant rainfall. The entire Chinese empire 
is highly favored by nature in this respect, and 
the destruction that has taken place is ex- 
clusively the work of man. It is customary 
with us to condemn the feudal system and to 
deplore the reservation of vast tracts of coun- 
try by a landed gentry, but the condition of 
China leads us to question whether Europe, 
but for this, might not have also been denuded 
and made uninhabitable for civilized man. 
On this point Dr. Ross aptly remarks: 
If the Chinese had not so early rid themselves 
of feudalism the country might have profited, as 
did Europe during the Middle Ages, by the harsh 
forest laws and the vast wooded preserves of a 
hunting nobility; or a policy of national con- 
servation would have availed if begun five cen- 
turies ago. Now, however, nothing will meet the 
dire need of China but a long scientific, recupera- 
tive treatment far more extensive and thorough- 
going than even the most enlightened European 
governments have attempted. Since that is clearly 
beyond the foresight and administrative capacity 
of this generation of Chinese, the slow physical 
deterioration of the country may be expected to 
continue during our time (pp. 24, 27). 
Dr. Ross gives a brilliant description of the 
ruined condition of the country, especially on 
pages 22-24, too extended to be reproduced 
here, but which should be read by all who are 
interested in the conservation movement in 
