Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/139

 receive far greater attention than they now enjoy. It will grow more important with every decade to obtain the greatest possible tribute from the portions of land, steadily decreasing in area, which can be spared from the growing needs of the builder. Every discovery of the chemist which can be laid under contribution by the agriculturist will eagerly be seized upon. Every means which can be devised for replacing what we take from the soil will be utilised to the full: and of course the inevitable disappearance of the horse as a means of traction, and of the flocks and herds which now yield manure, and perhaps the gradual exhaustion of the minerals (as rock phosphates) from which artificial soil enrichers are prepared, will make it necessary to rearrange, on safe, economical and convenient lines, our present plans of sanitation. The insane wastefulness of draining into the sea cannot long be tolerated. Every conceivable means of conserving our mundane capital will have to be made use of. In other ways science will come to the rescue. The farmer's sufferings from the depredations of vermin of various kinds will perhaps never be much affected by invention, because all nature is so curiously interdependent that the eradication of one pest has an awkward way of intensifying some greater evil: we destroy birds and are punished by a plague of caterpillars. The accidents of