Man and Nature Part 43

No. 43 (page 358, _note_). In the course of the present year (1864), there have been several land slips on the borders of the Lake of Como, and in one instance the grounds of a villa lying upon the margin of the water suffered a considerable displacement. If the lake should be lowered to any considerable extent, in pursuance of the plan mentioned in the note on page 358, there is ground to fear that the steep sh.o.r.es of the lake might, at some points, be deprived of a lateral pressure requisite to their stability, and slide into the water as on the Lake of Lungern. See p. 356.

No. 44 (page 369, _last paragraph but one of note_). In like manner, while the box, the cedar, the fir, the oak, the pine, "beams," and "timber," are very frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, not one of these words is found in the New, _except_ the case of the "beam in the eye," in the parable in Matthew and Luke.

No. 45 (page 375, _note_). In all probability, the real change effected by human art in the superficial geography of Egypt, is the conversion of pools and marshes into dry land, by a system of transverse dikes, which compelled the flood water to deposit its sediment on the banks of the river instead of carrying it to the sea. The _colmate_ of modern Italy were thus antic.i.p.ated in ancient Egypt.

No. 46 (page 378). We have seen in _Appendix_, No. 42, _ante_, that the mean temperature of a station on the borders of the Lake of Haarlem--a sheet of water formerly covering sixty-two and a half square English miles--for the period between the 11th of April and the 20th of September, had been raised not less than a degree of Fahrenheit by the draining of that lake; or, to state the case more precisely, that the formation of the lake, which was a consequence of man's improvidence, had reduced the temperature one degree F. below the natural standard.

The artificially irrigated lands of France, Piedmont, and Lombardy, taken together, are fifty times as extensive as the Lake of Haarlem, and they are situated in climates where evaporation is vastly more rapid than in the Netherlands. They must therefore, no doubt, affect the local climate to a far greater extent than has been observed in connection with the draining of the lake in question. I do not know that special observations have been made with a view to measure the climatic effects of irrigation, but in the summer I have often found the _morning_ temperature, when the difference would naturally be least perceptible, on the watered plains of Piedmont, nine miles south of Turin, several degrees lower than that recorded at an observatory in the city.

No. 47 (page 391, _note_). The Roman aqueduct known as the Pont du Gard, near Nismes, was built, in all probability, nineteen centuries ago. The bed of the river Gardon, a rather swift stream, which flows beneath it, can have suffered but a slight depression since the piers of the aqueduct were founded.

No. 48 (page 393, _first note_). Duponchel makes the following remarkable statement: "The river Herault rises in a granitic region, but soon reaches calcareous formations, which it traverses for more than sixty kilometres, rolling through deep and precipitous ravines, into which the torrents are constantly discharging enormous ma.s.ses of pebbles belonging to the hardest rocks of the Jura.s.sian period. These debris, continually renewed, compose, even below the exit of the gorge where the river enters into a regular channel cut in a tertiary deposit, broad beaches, prodigious acc.u.mulations of rolled pebbles, extending several kilometres down the stream, but they diminish in size and weight so rapidly that above the mouth of the river, which is at a distance of thirty or thirty-five kilometres from the gorge, every trace of calcareous matter has disappeared from the sands of the bottom, which are exclusively silicious."--_Avant-projet pour la creation d'un sol fertile_, etc., p. 20.

No. 49 (page 404, _first paragraph of second note_). The length of the lower course of the Po having been considerably increased by the filling up of the Adriatic with its deposits, the velocity of the current ought, _prima facie_, to have been diminished and its bed raised in proportion.

There are grounds for believing that this has happened in the case of the Nile, and one reason why the same effect has not been more sensibly perceptible in the Po is, that the confinement of the current by continuous embankments gives it a high-water velocity sufficient to sweep out deposits let fall at lower stages and slower movements of the water. Torrential streams tend first to excavate, then to raise, their beds. No general law on this point can be stated in relation to the middle and lower course of rivers. The conditions which determine the question of the depression or elevation of a river bed are too multifarious, variable, and complex to be subjected to formulae, and they can scarcely even be enumerated. See, however, note on p. 431.

No. 50 (page 406, _first paragraph_). The system proposed in the text is substantially the Egyptian method, the Nile dikes having been constructed rather to retain than to exclude the water. The waters of rivers which flow down planes of gentle inclination, deposit in their inundations the largest proportion of their sediment as soon as, by overflowing their banks, they escape from the swift current of the channel, and consequently the immediate banks of such rivers become higher than the grounds lying farther from the stream. In the "intervals," or "bottoms," of the great North American rivers, the alluvial banks are elevated and dry, the flats more remote from the river lower and swampy. This is generally observable in Egypt, though less so than in the valley of the Mississippi, where, below Cape Girardeau, the alluvial banks const.i.tute natural glacis descending as you recede from the river, at an average of seven feet in the first mile.--HUMPHREYS AND ABBOT'S _Report_, pp. 96, 97.

The Egyptian crossdikes, by retaining the water of the inundations, compel it to let fall its remaining slime, and hence the elevation of the remoter land goes on at a rate not very much slower than that of the immediate banks. Probably transverse embankments would produce the same effect in the Mississippi valley. In the great floods of this river, it is observed that, at a certain distance from the channel, the bottoms, though lower than the banks, are flooded to a less depth. See cross sections in Plate IV. of Humphreys and Abbot's Report. This apparently anomalous fact is due, I suppose, to the greater swiftness of the current of the overflowing water in the low grounds, which are often drained through the channels of rivers whose beds lie at a lower level than that of the Mississippi, or by the bayous which are so characteristic a feature of the geography of that valley. A judicious use of dikes would probably convert the swamps of the lower Mississippi valley into a region like Egypt.

No. 51 (_second note_). The mean discharge of the Mississippi is 675,000 cubic feet per second, and, accordingly, that river contributes to the sea about eleven times as much water as the Po, and more than sis and a half times as much as the Nile. The discharge of the Mississippi is estimated at one-fourth of the precipitation in its basin, certainly a very large proportion, when we consider the rapidity of evaporation in many parts of the basin, and the probable loss by infiltration.--HUMPHREYS AND ABBOT'S _Report_, p. 93.

No. 52 (page 423, _first paragraph_). Artificially directed currents of water have been advantageously used in civil engineering for displacing and transporting large quant.i.ties of earth, and there is no doubt that this agency might be profitably employed to a far greater extent than has yet been attempted. Some of the hydraulic works in California for was.h.i.+ng down ma.s.ses of auriferous earth are on a scale stupenduous enough to produce really important topographical changes.

No. 53 (page 435, _first note_). I have lately been informed by a resident of the Ionian Islands, who is familiar with this phenomenon, that the sea flows uninterruptedly into the sub-insular cavities, at all stages of the tide.

No. 54 (page 438, _note_). It is observed in Cornwall that deep mines are freer from water in artificially well-drained, than in undrained agricultural districts.--ESQUIROS, _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Nov. 15, 1863, p. 430.

No. 55 (page 441). See, on the Artesian wells of the Sahara, and especially on the throwing up of living fish by them, an article ent.i.tled, _Le Sahara_, etc., by Charles Martins, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for August 1, 1864, pp. 618, 619.

No. 56 (page 444, _first note_). From the article in the _Rev. des Deux Mondes_, referred to in the preceding note, it appears that the wells discovered by Ayme were truly artesian. They were bored in rock, and provided at the outlet with a pear-shaped valve of stone, by which the orifice could be closed or opened at pleasure.

No. 57 (page 447, _second note_). Hull ingeniously suggests that, besides other changes, fine sand intermixed with or deposited above a coa.r.s.er stratum, as well as the minute particles resulting from the disintegration of the latter, may be carried by rain in the case of dunes, or by the ordinary action of sea water in that of subaqueous sandbanks, down through the interstices in the coa.r.s.er layer, and thus the relative position of fine sand and gravel may be more or less changed.--_Oorsp.r.o.ng der Hollandsche Duinen_, p. 103.

No. 58 (page 479). It appears from Laurent, that marine sh.e.l.ls, of extant species, are found in the sands of the Sahara, far from the sea, and even at considerable depths below the surface.--_Memoires sur le Sahara Oriental_, p. 62.

This observation has been confirmed by late travellers, and is an important link in the chain of evidence which tends to prove that the upheaval of the Libyan desert is of comparatively recent date.

No. 59 (p. 480). "At New Quay [in England] the dune sands are converted to stone by an oxyde of iron held in solution by the water which pervades them. This stone, which is formed, so to speak, under our eye, has been found solid enough to be employed for building."--ESQUIROS, _L'Angleterre et la vie Anglaise_, _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1 March, 1864, pp. 44, 45.

No. 60 (page 496, _first paragraph_). In Ditmarsh, the breaking of the surface by the man[oe]uvering of a corps of cavalry let loose a sand-drift which did serious injury before it was subdued.--KOHL, _Inseln u. Marschen._ etc., III. p. 282.

Similar cases have occurred in Eastern Ma.s.sachusetts, from equally slight causes.--See Th.o.r.eAU, _A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers_, pp. 151-208.

No. 61 (page 497, _last note_). A more probable explanation of the fact stated in the note is suggested by elisee Reclus, in an article ent.i.tled, _Le Littoral de la France_, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for Sept. 1, 1864, pp. 193, 194. This able writer believes such pools to be the remains of ancient maritime bays, which have been cut off from the ocean by gradually acc.u.mulated sand banks raised by the waves and winds to the character of dunes.

No. 62 (page 506, _note_). The statement in the note is confirmed by Olmsted: "There is not a sufficient demand for rosin, except of the first qualities, to make it worth transporting from the inland distilleries; it is ordinarily, therefore, conducted off to a little distance, in a wooden trough, and allowed to flow from it to waste upon the ground. At the first distillery I visited, which had been in operation but one year, there lay a congealed pool of rosin, estimated to contain over three thousand barrels."--_A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States_, 1863, p. 345.

No. 63 (page 507). In an article on the dunes of Europe, in Vol. 29 (1864) of _Aus der Natur_, p. 590, the dunes are estimated to cover, on the islands and coasts of Schleswig Holstein, in Northwest Germany, Denmark, Holland, and France, one hundred and eighty-one German, or nearly four thousand English square miles; in Scotland, about ten German, or two hundred and ten English miles; in Ireland, twenty German, or four hundred and twenty English miles; and in England, one hundred and twenty German, or more than twenty-five hundred English miles.

No. 64 (page 512, _last paragraph_). For a brilliant account of the improvement of the Landes, see Edmond About, _Le Progres_, Chap, VII.

In the memoir referred to in _Appendix_, No. 48, _ante_, Duponchel proposes the construction of artificial torrents to grind calcareous rock to slime by rolling and attrition in its bed, and, at the same time, the was.h.i.+ng down of an argillaceous deposit which is to be mixed with the calcareous slime and distributed over the Landes by watercourses constructed for the purpose. By this means, he supposes that a highly fertile soil could be formed on the surface, which would also be so raised by the process as to admit of freer drainage. That nothing may be wanting to recommend this project, Duponchel suggests that, as some of the rivers of Western France are auriferous, it is probable that gold enough may be collected from the was.h.i.+ngs to reduce the cost of the operations materially.

No. 65 (page 528, _first paragraph_). The opening of a channel across Cape Cod would have, though perhaps to a smaller extent, the same effects in interchanging the animal life of the southern and northern sh.o.r.es of the isthmus, as in the case of the Suez ca.n.a.l; for although the breadth of Cape Cod does not anywhere exceed twenty miles, and is in some places reduced to one, it appears from the official reports on the Natural History of Ma.s.sachusetts, that the population of the opposite waters differs widely in species.

Not having the original doc.u.ments at hand, I quote an extract from the _Report on the Invertebrate Animals of Ma.s.s._, given by Th.o.r.eau, _Excursions_, p. 69: "The distribution of the marine sh.e.l.ls is well worthy of notice as a geological fact. Cape Cod, the right arm of the Commonwealth, reaches out into the ocean some fifty or sixty miles. It is nowhere many miles wide; but this narrow point of land has. .h.i.therto proved a barrier to the migration of many species of mollusca. Several genera and numerous species, which are separated by the intervention of only a few miles of land, are effectually prevented from mingling by the Cape, and do not pa.s.s from one side to the other * * * * Of the one hundred and ninety-seven marine species, eighty-three do not pa.s.s to the south sh.o.r.e, and fifty are not found on the north sh.o.r.e of the Cape."

Probably the distribution of the species of mollusks is affected by unknown local conditions, and therefore an open ca.n.a.l across the Cape might not make every species that inhabits the waters on one side common to those of the other; but there can be no doubt that there would be a considerable migration in both directions.

The fact stated in the report may suggest an important caution in drawing conclusions upon the relative age of formations from the character of their fossils. Had a geological movement or movements upheaved to different levels the bottoms of waters thus separated by a narrow isthmus, and dislocated the connection between those bottoms, naturalists, in after ages, reasoning from the character of the fossil faunas, might have a.s.signed them to different, and perhaps very widely distant, periods.

No. 66 (page 548, _first paragraph_). To the geological effects of the thickening of the earth's crust in the Bay of Bengal, are to be added those of thinning it on the highlands where the Ganges rises. The same action may, as a learned friend suggests to me, even have a cosmical influence. The great rivers of the earth, taken as a whole, transport sediment from the polar regions in an equatorial direction, and hence tend to increase the equatorial diameter, and at the same time, by their inequality of action, to a continual displacement of the centre of gravity, of the earth. The motion of the globe and of all bodies affected by its attraction, is modified by every change of its form, and in this case we are not authorized to say that such effects are in any way compensated.

THE END.