February 19, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



277 



tribution of plants and man sets the 

 Eoman boundary in Germany at the edge 

 of the Franconian forest and cites the fact 

 that the Arabs went wherever the date palm 

 would grow.^^ The practical biologist, 

 such as the agricultural explorer, turns the 

 problem around, shows how to control the 

 distribution of lower life and thus to 

 modify the distribution of man. 



Such results must flow from the work of 

 the department of botanical research of 

 the Carnegie Institution, and Dr. McDougal 

 of the Desert Laboratory well sets forth 

 the interrelations of the sciences when he 

 likens the work to the making of a canti- 

 lever bridge whose further ends may rest 

 on chemical, physical, geological or geo- 

 graphical piers.'^^ A good illustration of 

 this finds immediate place in the investiga- 

 tions by Professor Huntington, in western 

 forests, of climatic events. 



The elimatologist asks for definite cli- 

 matic eflrects on man. The ethnologist or 

 sociologist finds traits in man which might 

 have a climatic origin. The geographer 

 wants all that all types of specialists can 

 give him, both in the physical and psychical 

 spheres. Thus we may approach from the 

 point of view of causes or of results and 

 follow down or up the stream of effects. 



"We have made a hasty survey of two 

 fields of causation, the one physical, the 

 other organic. Let us turn to certain 

 groups of phenomena in the realm of effects 

 or results. The most important and surely 

 the most baffling problems here are in the 

 psychic field. Here the geographer will be 

 peculiarly dependent on workers in sister 

 sciences and the gap may be hard to bridge. 

 Geographers are not as a rule specialists in 

 psychology, and there is no reason to be- 

 lieve that many students in psychic fields 

 are specially versed in geography. If we 



52 Paper is noticed, Scot. Geog. Mag., Vol. 27, 

 39^1. 



53 An. Eep. of Director, 1912. 



can offer a stimulus which shall lead these 

 kinds of scholars to struggle up the stream 

 of causality, it may be safer than for us to 

 drift down through rapids and among 

 rocks. But the work ought to be done, and 

 the geographer can at least show its worth 

 and encourage the doing of it. 



In this research we are not to think that 

 the earth was all powerful with early man, 

 but is helpless to-day. Color or other race 

 features may have been fixed, but this is 

 not all. If there is something in man that 

 is found in every man, wherever he is, he 

 is not thereby released from the pressure of 

 environment. Psychic reaction on nature 

 does not destroy nature's efficiency, but in 

 a degree directs, refines and uses it. "When 

 Professor Lester F. Ward says that "the 

 environment transforms the animal, while 

 man transforms the environment,"^* he 

 utters but a partial truth. Perhaps he was 

 attracted by rhetorical form, for in a later 

 passage he recovers himself, recognizing 

 the psychic effects of environment, for, 



Courage, love of liberty, industry and thrift, 

 ingenuity and intelligence, are all developed by 

 contact with restraining influences adapted to 

 stimulating them and not so severe as to cheek 

 their growth.ss 



If a hard winter is a "great Teutonic 

 institution, ' ' if rains, dark skies and winter 

 have made more serious peoples in the north 

 of Europe than are found along the Medi- 

 terranean, if Geikie rightly ascribes the 

 heart of Ossian's poems to nature in the 

 West Highlands,^' these qualities of envi- 

 ronment are pressing on the human spirit 

 to-day as in Neolithic or Celtic time, mod- 

 erated, perhaps, by modem skill in getting 

 protection from nature, and by greater con- 

 tact with all the world. We will not deny 

 the assertion of Thomas that "the force of 

 climate and geography is greater in the 



5^L. F. Ward, "Pure Sociology," 16. 



55IUd., 58. 



56 A. Geikie, "Scenery of Scotland," 407-08. 



