232 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VII., No 162 



planned but too ambitious programme of work, 

 involving a concert of action between two such 

 observers, had to be abandoned ; and that the 

 work of forming a star-catalogue had to be post- 

 poned until it could be done with a single instru- 

 ment. 



We have no grounds for challenging the ac- 

 curacy of this statement. Two opposite conclu- 

 sions are, however, drawn from it. The view taken 

 by the naval superintendents is, in brief, this : if 

 line-officers of the navy, trained from youth in 

 the art of managing men and making them work 

 together, cannot get two men to work in the same 

 room, observe the same stars, and look at the 

 same clock, what would be the result of intrust- 

 ing such a task to a civilian astronomer untrained 

 in naval discipline ? No organization w r ould last 

 a week under such a regime. The view of the 

 civilian astronomer is, that all the trouble is a 

 necessary consequence of placing the work in 

 charge of a man who knows nothing about its 

 execution. Betw^een these views we leave our 

 readers to decide for themselves. 



The commodore alludes to the ' so-called scien- 

 tific men of the country ' who want a national 

 observatory, in terms which do not strike us as 

 happily chosen. He tells these misguided men 

 that 1 the navy will take no responsibility ' 

 for their observatory, in a tone which evidently 

 implies that the threatened absence of this re- 

 sponsibility would impress them with a deep 

 sense of their rashness. Whether the commo- 

 dore's threat will have this effect is a question for 

 future consideration, and we shall dismiss the 

 subject with a single remark. It has often been 

 said that there is hardly a graduate of the naval 

 academy who is not ready, with great alacrity and 

 at a moment's notice, to take charge of the coast 

 survey, the fish commission, or any other scien- 

 tific work, without any consciousness that he is 

 undertaking a more formidable task than stand- 

 ing watch on the deck of a ship. We have al- 

 ways looked upon this statement as a humorous 

 exaggeration ; but it is hardly possible to read 

 Commodore Belknap's utterances without a feel- 

 ing that the remark may have more truth in it 

 than we had supposed. 



THE SWAMPS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



The conditions which have determined the oc- 

 cupation of land in the United States differ widely 

 from those which have controlled the settlement 



of most other countries. In other states there 

 have been political or geographical limits which 

 have greatly restrained the movements of popu- 

 lation. In this country there has been, from the 

 beginning to the present day, an abundance of 

 good, readily subjugable land awaiting the settler. 

 It is evident, however, that within this decade we 

 pass from this old condition where excellent land 

 was to be had for the asking. Before 1890 all 

 such fields will have been occupied. There will 

 be no more rich frontier lands ready to welcome 

 the immigrant : therefore the tide of immigration 

 will be turned upon the areas which have been 

 passed in the swift westward movement of our 

 population. These neglected districts are of great 

 extent and very varied nature. They consist, 

 in part, of land which is somewhat less fertile 

 than the best soils, but which in every other 

 respect is fit for tillage. In larger part, how- 

 ever, these unoccupied districts, which constitute 

 the land-reserves of the United States, afford 

 soils which contain the elements required for the 

 most profitable crops ; but they are rendered in- 

 fertile by an excess or a deficiency of water. In 

 the arid but irrigable regions, and in the inun- 

 dated or swamp lands, we have a very large 

 tillable area which may be won to agriculture ; 

 and, when so won, these lands will afford re- 

 sources of the utmost importance to the people. 



In his report on the lands of the arid region of 

 the United States, published in 1879, Major J. W. 

 Powell has given an admirable account of those 

 districts where the soils suffer from a deficiency 

 of water, and in the preface to that report he 

 notes the importance of the class of inundated 

 lands ; but so far, no detailed studies of the latter 

 class of lands have been prepared. Recently, 

 however, Major Powell has organized a division 

 of the U. S. geological survey, which is charged 

 with a careful inquiry into the geological history 

 and physical conditions of the swamps and other 

 inundated lands of the country. 



A preliminary study of the field has shown 

 the remarkable fact, that, owing to the abun- 

 dance of cheap land which could be eashV won to 

 tillage, we have left untouched, in the region east 

 of the Mississippi, districts of easily drained 

 swamp-lands amounting to more than fifty thou- 

 sand square miles of area. These lands have tin 

 same nature as those which, in England and the 

 states of northern Europe, were drained centuries 

 ago, ;iikI now afford the most fertile fields of those 

 countries. The inundated lands of the seaboard 

 region of the United States, as well as the lands 

 of the lower Mississippi, remain in the state in 

 which they were when first seen by men, while 

 the similar areas in England were long ago won 



