JANUAET 20, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



109 



ogy, a leader in education, and a broad stu- 

 dent of public affairs. President Van Hise is 

 perbaps better equipped than any one else to 

 treat the natural resources of the country, 

 both in detail and in their relation to the gen- 

 eral welfare; and the excellence of bis equip- 

 ment is attested by the completeness and 

 timeliness of bis treatise. Conservation of 

 late has become a cult, the influence whereof 

 extends to every section of the country and 

 pervades a large part of our population; yet 

 there is a dearth of data within public reach, 

 partly by reason of the unfortunately limited 

 edition of that three-volume report of the Na- 

 tional Conservation Commission containing 

 the fullest inventory ever made of the re- 

 sources of a nation — and Van Hise's compact 

 book is designed to meet the current condi- 

 tion. 



Beginning with a summary history of the 

 conservation movement, the natural sources 

 of national existence are treated in order 

 as mineral resources, water, forests and 

 land, with a general discussion of conserva- 

 tion and mankind. Of the mineral resources 

 the fuels — coal, peat, petroleum and natural 

 gas — are quite properly placed first. Next to 

 America's contribution of a form of govern- 

 ment, the most striking fact in the develop- 

 ment of the United States is the exploitation 

 of the mineral fuels. This has been done with 

 extraordinary rapidity — ^virtually within three 

 quarters of a century, chiefly within a genera- 

 tion. The use of mineral fuels not merely 

 made America a manufacturing nation; it 

 multiplied human power over lower nature, 

 and intensified intelligence to a degree revo- 

 lutionizing the thought of the world. At first 

 idly deemed unlimited in the slack thinking 

 of the time, the use of the abounding nat- 

 ural energy afforded by such fuels so stimu- 

 lated both industrial and mental growth that 

 new methods arose, especially that quantita- 

 tive method which forms perhaps the highest 

 expression of human advancement — and as 

 the quantitative method naturally extended to 

 the coals both their limits and the wastes of 

 earlier exploitation were realized and finally 

 measured. The United States contains 60 or 



70 per cent, of the coal of the world, and is 

 more richly endowed with petroleum and 

 natural gas than any other country; yet the 

 wastes were long greater than the uses, and 

 even yet combustion is so imperfect that only 

 a small fraction (probably less than 10 per 

 cent.) of the thermal energy of the coal is 

 actually utilized. But new standards are 

 arising with the spread of the conservation 

 movement; heedless waste is reprobated and 

 is rapidly diminishing; while incomplete 

 utilization is receiving attention, and engi- 

 neers and inventors are devising means for 

 more complete combustion of the coal and 

 larger application of its energy to the develop- 

 ment of power. Paradoxically enough, it 

 would appear that the age of steam opened 

 through the mineral fuels will be closed 

 through better use of the same sources of 

 energy; for coal gasified and used in gas en- 

 gines averages twice the efiiciency of the 

 same coal burned under the steam boiler. 

 America's coal underlies an area of some 

 500,000 square miles, or 13 per cent, of the 

 country, and is estimated to amount to three 

 trillion tons; of late it is mined at the rate of 

 about 450,000,000 tons annually, or say 5 tons 

 per capita for our people; at the current rate 

 of use it would last several thousand years, 

 while at the currently increasing rate (doub- 

 ling once in seven or eight years) it would be 

 exhausted within 150 years. 



Next to coal it was iron that made this 

 country industrially great; the high-grade 

 ores have for a half -century been taken out of 

 the ground and converted into finished prod- 

 uct at a rate marking an epoch in world his- 

 tory. When the nation was founded a few 

 pounds of iron sufficed for the average family; 

 now the production exceeds 25,000,000 tons 

 each year, or nearly 700 pounds for each man, 

 woman and child of our entire population. Of 

 high-grade ores we have less than 5,000,000 

 tons ; at the currently increasing rate of min- 

 ing it would not outlast the middle of the 

 present century— though with proper economy 

 and progressive recourse to low-grade ores the 

 life of the supply will be prolonged at rela- 

 tively increasing cost. 



