The modifications of the external aspects of organic nature produced by man's interference / by George Rolleston.

  • Rolleston, George, 1829-1881.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The modifications of the external aspects of organic nature produced by man's interference / by George Rolleston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    68/78 (page 66)
    p. 711, Tab. iii., Ease. iv. 1711, coupled with liis comment* upon the scene of enjoyment wliich it represents, and in which the palm-trees play so essential a part, may remind us of Linnaeus’s otten-quoted saying, “Man dwells within the tropics, and lives on the fruit of the palm-tree; he exists in other parts ol the world, and there makes shift to feed on corn and flesh.” Ihit it may suggest a little more than this. It may'^ cause us to think seriously on the question what will be, not the effect on external nature which man’s action will produce, but what will be the efiect which external nature will ])roduce upon man, if by some recrudescence of a glacial period, either in a geological sense, or in the economic sense, which an exhaustion of our sujiply of Nearctic as well as Pala;ai-ctic coal would, in the absence of any substitute, bring about, we should be driven south- wards, and become tropico- instead of cosmopolitan. Wliat will be the eflect of the easy terms upon which life can be main- tained in the tropics upon the species which has hitherto never developed a lasting civilisation except under the stimulation “ curis acuens mortalia corda ” of northern latitudes or moun- tain elevation?! How will it fare with intellectual culture w hen and where, not to speak any further of our date-palm, the coconut-palm, the banana, the breadfruit, will make exertion so all but superfluous tor the dura a stirpe genera who now govern the w'orld ? If we are to guide ourselves as we peer into the twilight of the future by what w'e can see going on in the broad Mediterranean noonday of the present, the example of the idle Corsican is not altogether encouraging. A Corsican family, we are told by their French fellow'-citizens,! with a couple of dozen of chestnut-trees, and with a herd of goats which “And themselves,” to the great disgust of all botanists, have no aspirations left to satisfy beyond that of being able to buy a gun, to the great disgust of all sportsmen. In a matter of prophesying. Sir, the argument from authority and authorities has its legitimate place, and upon the present occasion it happens to have a very legitimate time. I have in a w'ork on ‘ Hereditary Genius,’ published in the year 1869, found it stated that “ No Englishman of the nineteenth century is purely * “ Hi sunt palniicolarum in inesse, ut sic loquar clactylifera lusus magis quam labores, neutiquam cum nostratium agricolaruin infinitis occupationibus com- parandi. Heu ilias hie laborum ! duin ngros effriugimus subaramus ct resul- caraus; dum occamus et liramus, runcamus et refarrimus. . . . Secus sentias cle ambrosiis dapibus Persarum et Ambum; ha:.' gratis omnino et solo almje naturm munere conferuntur.” t Wallace, ‘ Natural Selection,’ p. 318 ; and Bonstetten, ‘L’hommedu IMidi et I’homme du Nord,’ 1820, pa.'-wn. J Helm, 1. c. p. 340.