September 25, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



441 



first place in animal life not to the animal 

 like a greyhound on two legs; but to the 

 middling lamb, or perhaps to the ubiqui- 

 tous rabbit. Australia is the same island 

 continent that it always was ; there are the 

 same indentations of coast, the same moun- 

 tains and rivers, but the face of the land is 

 different. In past years there was no town, 

 and the country was wilderness ; on the sur- 

 face of the wilderness many of the living 

 things were different; and from under the 

 earth has come water and mineral, the ex- 

 istence of which was not suspected. A cen- 

 tury hence it will be different again, and I 

 want to see sets of maps illustrating more 

 clearly than is now the case the changes 

 which successive generations of men have 

 made and are making in the face of Aus- 

 tralia and of the whole earth. 



More than half a century ago Buckle, in 

 his "History of Civilization," wrote: 

 "Formerly the richest countries were those 

 in which nature was most bountiful; now 

 the richest countries are those in which 

 man is most active. For in our age of the 

 world, if nature is parsimonious we know 

 how to compensate her deficiencies. If a 

 river is difficult to navigate, or a country 

 difiicult to traverse, an engineer can correct 

 the error and remedy the evil. If we have 

 no rivers we make canals; if we have no 

 natural harbors we make artificial ones." 

 These words have a double force at the 

 present day and in the present surround- 

 ings, for nowhere has man been more active 

 as a geographical agency than in Australia ; 

 and not inside Australia only, but also in 

 regard to the relations of Australia to the 

 outside world. 



An island continent Australia is still, and 

 always will be, on the maps. It always will 

 be the same number of miles distant from 

 other lands; but will these maps represent 

 practical everyday facts? What do miles 

 mean when it takes a perpetually dimin- 



ishing time to cover them? Is it not truer 

 to facts to measure distances, as do Swiss 

 guides, in Stunden (hours) ? What, once 

 more, will an island continent mean if the 

 sea is to be overlooked and overflown ? The 

 tendency is for the world to become one; 

 and we know perfectly well that, as far as 

 distance is concerned, for practical pur- 

 poses the geographical position of Aus- 

 tralia has changed through the agency of 

 scientific man. If you come to think of it, 

 what geography has been more concerned 

 with than anything else, directly or indi- 

 rectly, is distance. It is the knowledge of 

 other places not at our actual door that we 

 teach in geography, how to get there, what 

 to find when we get there, and so forth. 

 The greatest revolution that is being 

 worked in human life is the elimination of 

 distance, and this elimination is going on 

 apace. It is entering into every phase of 

 public and private life, and is changing it 

 more and more. The most difiicult and 

 dangerous of all Imperial problems at this 

 moment is the color problem, and this has 

 been entirely created by human agency, sci- 

 entific agency, bringing the lands of the 

 colored and the white men closer together. 

 Year after year, because distance is being 

 diminished, coming and going of men and 

 of products is multiplying; steadily and 

 surely the world is becoming one continent. 

 This is what I want geographers to note 

 and the peoples to learn. Geographers 

 have recorded what the world is according 

 to nature. I want them to note and teach 

 others to note how under an all-wise Provi- 

 dence it is being subdued, replenished, 

 recast and contracted by man. 



Charles P. Lucas 



PSOFESSOB BUGO KBONECKEB 

 Hugo Kronecker, for the last thirty years 

 professor of physiology at the University of 

 Berne, Switzerland, died June 6. Although 



