BRITTANY: THE LAND OF THE SARDINE 



573 



tere, Pointe du Raz, strongly suggests 

 the Land's End region and is probably 

 the most rugged part of the coast. 



Those who enjoy pastoral scenes will 

 find pedestrian and carriage trips along 

 the country roads of Brittany far from 

 dull, especially if one has enough imagi- 

 nation to enable him to enter for a mo- 

 ment into the lives of the diverse types 

 of humanity he will see as he passes 

 along, and if he remembers enough of 

 Breton history and archeology to appre- 

 ciate their significant relations to land- 

 scape and people. 



The public roads, some of them dating 

 from the Roman conquest, are, as a rule, 

 excellent. Many of them are of that 



peculiar type so common in Cornwall and 

 so conducive to the sanguinary guerrilla 

 warfare that has often been waged 

 here — that is, the roadway is separated 

 from the fields and woods on either side 

 by high banks of earth or stone or both, 

 overgrown with herbage and often sup- 

 porting trees or dense hedges. 



To satisfy any longings one may have 

 for the antiquated — and we Americans 

 are particularly prone to rave over an- 

 cient structures and ruins because we 

 have none at home — one now and then 

 has an opportunity to visit a feudal 

 castle that was already old when the 

 news of the discovery of America was 

 first brought to the Bretons. 



WHEN OUR COUNTRY IS FIFTY YEARS 



OLDER* 



By Raphael Zon, of the U. S. Forest Service 



IN the last analysis all material 

 wealth, all the comforts and neces- 

 sities of life, are the product of 

 two elements — nature and labor. It may 

 be truly said that nature, or the earth, 

 is the mother of labor the father of all 

 products necessary to sustain human life. 

 The richness and prosperity of a coun- 

 try, therefore, depend on the presence of 

 natural resources within its borders, such 

 as water, minerals, forests, and culti- 

 vable soils on the one hand, and intelli- 

 gent human enegy on the other to shape 

 them into the forms necessary for the 

 needs of man. Of the two elements the 

 natural resources are indispensable, for 

 in a country like the Desert of Sahara 

 all human effort would be of but little 

 avail. The growth of a nation depends, 

 therefore, upon the extent of the natural 

 resources and upon the knowledge of 

 how to use them with as little destruc- 

 tion as possible. 



The resources of a country fall nat- 

 iirally into three groups — water, min- 



erals, and land — which represent, respect- 

 ively, resources which are inexhausti- 

 ble, resources which are exhaustible and 

 cannot be renewed and resources which 

 are exhaustible but can be renewed. 



It may be questioned, indeed, whether 

 there is such a thing as an inexhaustible 

 natural resource. Even water, through 

 the denudation of the drainage basins, 

 may become irregular in its flow, or 

 through the careless disposal of refuse 

 may become polluted so that it cannot 

 be used. Mines are illustrations of re- 

 sources which are exhaustible and not 

 renewable. Gas, oil, coal, and iron once 

 gone are gone forever. 



Of all the natural resources the only 

 one which contains within itself the pos- 

 sibility of infinite renewal is land. The 

 nation should therefore be most vitally 

 concerned with the conservation and im- 

 provement of this resource. Human 

 control over such natural resources as 

 minerals is limited. The only possible 

 means of conservation is the avoidance 



*Abstracted from "The Future Use of Land in the United States," by Raphael Zon. Forest 

 Service Bulletin 159. 



