September 25, 1&14] 



SCIENCE 



429 



lands Reafforestation Association is plant- 

 ing the pit mounds and ash quarries of the 

 Black Country with trees which will resist 

 smoke and bad air, alders, willows, pop- 

 lars, carrying out their work, a report says, 

 under a combination of difficulties not to be 

 found in any other country. Artificial 

 lakes and reservoirs again, such as I shall 

 refer to presently, are being made woodland 

 centers. In most civilized countries nowa- 

 days living creatures are to some extent 

 protected, tree planting is encouraged by 

 arbor days, and reserves are formed for 

 forests, for beasts and birds, the survivors 

 of the wild fauna of the earth. Some 

 lands, such as Greece, as I gather from Mr. 

 Perkins's report, are still being denuded of 

 trees, but as a general rule the human con- 

 science is becoming more and more alive to 

 the immorality and the impolicy of wast- 

 ing the surface of the earth and what lives 

 upon it, and is even beginning to take stock 

 as to whether the minerals beneath the sur- 

 face are inexhaustible. Therefore I ask 

 you now to consider man as the lord of cre- 

 ation in the nobler sense of the phrase, as 

 transforming geography, but more as a cre- 

 ative than as a destructive agency. 



How far has the agency of man altered, 

 and how far is it likely to alter, the sur- 

 face of the earth, the divisions and boun- 

 daries assigned by nature, the climate and 

 the production of the different parts of the 

 globe; and, further, how far, when not ac- 

 tually transforming nature, is human 

 agency giving nature the go-by ? It should 

 be borne in mind that science has effected, 

 and is effecting transformation, partly by 

 applying to old processes far more power- 

 ful machinery, partly by introducing new 

 processes altogether ; and that, as each new 

 force is brought to light, lands and peoples 

 are to a greater or less extent transformed. 

 The world was laid out afresh by coal and 

 steam. A new readjustment is taking place 



with the development of water power and 

 oil power. Lands with no coal, but with 

 fine water power or access to oil, are as- 

 serting themselves. Oil fuel is prolonging 

 continuous voyages and making coaling 

 stations superfluous. But of necessity it is 

 the earth herself who gives the machinery 

 for altering her own surface. The appli- 

 cation of the machinery is contributed by 

 the wit of man. 



The surface of the earth consists of land 

 and water. How far has human agency 

 converted water into land or land into 

 water, and how far, without actually trans- 

 forming land into water and water into 

 land, is it for practical human purposes 

 altering the meaning of land and water as 

 the great geographical divisions 1 A writer 

 on the Fens of South Lincolnshire has told 

 us: "The Romans, not content with ap- 

 propriating land all over the world, added 

 to their territory at home by draining lakes 

 and reclaiming marshes." "We can in- 

 stance another great race which, while ap- 

 propriating land all over the world, has 

 added to it by reclaiming land from water, 

 fresh or salt. The traveler from Great 

 Britain to the most distant of the great 

 British possessions. New Zealand, will find 

 on landing at Wellington a fine street, 

 Lambton Quay, the foreshore of the old 

 beach, seaward of which now rise many of 

 the city's finest buildings on land reclaimed 

 from the sea; and instances of the kind 

 might be indefinitely multipled. Now the 

 amount of land taken from water by man 

 has been taken more from fresh water than 

 from sea, and, taken in all, the amount is 

 infinitesimal as compared with the total 

 area of land and water; but it has been 

 very considerable in certain small areas of 

 the earth's surface, and from these small 

 areas have come races of men who have 

 profoundly modified the geography and 

 history of the world. This may be illus- 



