Scientific Essays and Lectures by Charles Kingsley
page 27 of 160 (16%)
page 27 of 160 (16%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
richness or barrenness of a country, but also its very shape; the
rate at which the hills are destroyed and washed into the lowland; the rate at which the seaboard is being removed by the action of waves--all these are branches of study which is becoming more and more important. And even in the study of animals and their effects on the vegetation, questions of really deep interest will arise. You will find that certain plants and trees cannot thrive in a district, while others can, because the former are browsed down by cattle, or their seeds eaten by birds, and the latter are not; that certain seeds are carried in the coats of animals, or wafted abroad by winds--others are not; certain trees destroyed wholesale by insects, while others are not; that in a hundred ways the animal and vegetable life of a district act and react upon each other, and that the climate, the average temperature, the maximum and minimum temperatures, the rainfall, act on them, and in the case of the vegetation, are reacted on again by them. The diminution of rainfall by the destruction of forests, its increase by replanting them, and the effect of both on the healthiness or unhealthiness of a place--as in the case of the Mauritius, where a once healthy island has become pestilential, seemingly from the clearing away of the vegetation on the banks of streams--all this, though to study it deeply requires a fair knowledge of meteorology, and even of a science or two more, is surely well worth the attention of any educated man who is put in charge of the health and lives of human beings. You will surely agree with me that the habit of mind required for such a study as this, is the very same as is required for successful |
|