Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/264

 258 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

��THE OCEANS: OUE FUTUEB PASTTJEES

��Bl ZONIA BABBB GHICAflO

��DXJBINO a six months' trip last year to Australia and the South Sea Islands^ seventy-nine days were spent upon the desolate Pacific Ocean. Beyond the bird zone that encircles the land the infinity of lonely waterscape was relieved by two whales, a few flying-fish and a small number of albatross. Days passed without a sign of life. Such an experience might well stimulate in any one an intense desire to re- claim this terrible desert, this lifeless expanse of moving monotony. Were the sea well stocked with whale, seal, dolphin and other oceanic mammals, the interest in sea travel would be tremendously enhanced. The pleasure and entertainment of the sailors and travelers would, however, be but a small part of this beneficent reclamation.

Humanity has always been in search of  pastures green " t As land increases in value, the grazing animals are driven f iui;her away £rom the centers of population to the cheaper lands or regions that are un- tiUable. It would be considered very poor economy to graze land that would produce one hundred bushels of com per acre. The '^ moving on of the '' cowboy" is his dominant attribute. Even in Australia, the continent new to European endeavor, the same story is repeated. The land near the settlements that can be cultivated with profit must produce cereals and other vegetable foods; hence the cattle and sheep are driven away into the '^ back blocks." Just how long this trekking of the cowboy can continue can not be stated in years. Yet it does not require a very fertile imagination to see that the time is not indefinite. When the human race takes the next step in progress and changes its goal and ideals from thingg to people, from the making of numerous and wonderful things to the production of strong and wonderful people, wars will be found only in the records of the savage past Then the normal increase of humanity will make it necessary for the earth to produce its maximum of vegetation for food and clothing and the cow- boy must be pushed off the land.

In our first geography we learned that the surface of the earth is three fourths water and one fourth land. This fact alone tells us that multiplying humanity must secure a great part of its food from the sea- When we can no longer afford to graze our sheep and cattle on the land, whence can we secure our beef and mutton? A survey of th^

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