population, which follows the path of the waters? The waters flow
through the city on, on toward the mighty ocean, and are then gradually
gathered upward into the soft embraces of the clouds and wafted back
again to the hills, whence they flow down once more to the valleys. But
the living stream of men, women, and children flows from the
country-side and leaves it more and more bare of active, vigorous,
healthy life: it does not, like the waters, "return again to cover the
earth," but moves ever on to the great city, and from thence, at least
for the great majority, there is no chance of more than, at best, a very
short stay in the country. No: the tide flows resistlessly [Page: 120]
onward to make more crowded our overcrowded tenements, to enlarge our
overgrown cities, to cause suburb to spread beyond suburb, to submerge
more and more the beautiful fields and hilly slopes which used to lie
near the busy life of the people, to make the atmosphere more foul, and
the task of the social reformer more and yet more difficult.

But surely there must be a way, could we but discover it, of imitating
the skill and bountifulness of Nature, by creating channels through
which some of our population shall be attracted back to the fields; so
that there shall be a stream of population pouring from the city into
the country, till a healthy balance is restored, and we have solved the
twin problems of rural depopulation and of the overcrowded, overgrown
city.

This brings me to the second branch of Prof. Geddes' paper, the
historical. The Professor reminds us how vestiges of one civilisation
lie super-imposed upon another, like geological strata, and asks.
"Understanding the present as the development of the past, are we not
preparing also to understand the future as the development of the
present?" Following this line of thought, I venture to suggest that