Marion I. Newbigin

“ At the present time, geography may be compared to one of Rodin’s statues in which we see a beautiful figure as it were struggling to escape from the marble in which it is imprisoned. So the geography of to-day is in the act of escaping from the matrix of mere facts in which it has been too long imprisoned. It is now displaying itself as a great unity in the making of which all the sciences have played their part. ”

“ If we bear in mind that North America is a large continent, and Europe a very small one, and that while Europe has no eastern seaboard, it is the eastern seaboard of America which faces Europe, we may realise that the climates of North America show a remarkable analogy to the European. On the western side we have in British Columbia and California respectively the same two types of maritime climate which occur in Europe, that is, British Columbia has a mild equable climate with abundant and equally distributed rainfall, and California has a Mediterranean climate. ”

“ The distribution of land and water, with all its effects on climate and on the distribution of life, is, as we have seen, caused by the main features of the relief of the earth, by the existence of vast depressions in which the water accumulates, and of relative elevations from which it flows. But the minor details of relief, hill and valley, ocean depth and continental shelf, are also important, and exercise a very marked effect upon distribution. They therefore demand in their turn some consideration. ”

“ Ultimately the forest region of Europe evolved its own type, perhaps from some aberrant strain of Mediterranean man, and this type, perfectly fitted to the forest regions, conquered the north and west, driving Alpine man up to the hills, and largely displacing Mediterranean man except where distinctively Mediterranean influences prevailed.
To the east, as the European forest dies away into the steppes of Asia, Nordic man can no longer compete successfully with Alpine man, and diminishes in numbers and in strength. ”

“ There has, therefore, always been war between evolving man and the giants of the plant world, a war which has swept the forests away from many of the more civilised parts of the globe, and which still continues, though man’s victory is now so complete that he can afford to be generous, and give protection to the remnants of his former foe. ”

“ As the weather grows hotter and drier, the plants with bulbous and tuberous roots die down to the ground, the annuals die altogether, leaving their seeds to wait till the autumn rains before they sprout. The grasses turn brown, and the peculiar parched appearance of the Mediterranean summer spreads over the land. ”

“ When a group of organisms is limited, from whatever cause, to a particular zone of the earth’s surface, the members of the group tend to acquire characters fitting them for this restricted area. But if the area is open, constantly or periodically, to incursions of organisms from adjacent areas, then, with the widening of the environment, and the greater intensity of the struggle for existence, evolution is quickened and new characters appear. ”

“ It seems probable that the languages of Europe are largely due to the grafting of Alpine or Eurasian tongues upon the different tongues already spoken by Mediterranean man. We have still in Britain a Celtic language, though it is spoken by people of Mediterranean characters, and it is an extraordinary fact that a people should impose its language and culture upon another race, and yet be itself unable to keep its footing among that race. ”

“ As is only natural with a developing subject, much discussion has taken place as to the exact limits of its field of action, and many definitions have been proposed with the object of setting forth these limits as clearly as possible. But it is sufficient for our purpose to note that geography deals with the surface-relief of the earth, and with the influence which that relief exercises upon the distribution of other phenomena, and especially upon the life of man. ”

“ The presence of the large wild forms is incompatible with almost any form of agriculture as is often proved disastrously in Africa, hence man’s ruthless warfare upon them.
But if man has destroyed the large ungulates he has found himself unable even to reduce the numbers of the Rodents, who gain in many ways by civilisation. The destruction of their rivals, the grass-eating ungulates, increases their natural food-supply. In South America, where there were very few ungulates till the white man brought his flocks and herds, the rodents were very numerous and reached a great size. ”

“ Yet the very existence of these magnificent monuments of the past means that in the old days the towns in which they were placed were not only centres of population and of wealth, but had also prestige enough to draw men’s eyes towards them. Their very peace and cleanliness to-day means that the life of the nation is eddying round other centres. ”

“ The great civilisations developed in the land mass of the Old World, though the waterless desert of the Sahara cut off much of Africa from participation in them. America developed a relatively high civilisation of its own, but as the icefields and ice-pack of the north formed a greater barrier to the migrations of man than to those of the northern animals, this [24] American civilisation was for long cut off from that of the Old World, and when free communication became possible, it went down before that of the eastern world. ”

“ Man’s habit of analysis made him study grasses and trees for long generations before he got back to the forest and to the grassland as they occur in nature. Plants as individuals are the province of the botanist, but those plant groups which are the expression of the interaction of climatic factors, soil, and surface relief, are the concern of the geographer. ”

“ The great continent of Asia, of which Europe, as we have seen, is but a peninsula, can be divided into a series of zones, distinguished alike by climate and by vegetation. To the north we have the cold tundra region, passing to the south into the forest region. The Asiatic forest region is continuous with that of Europe, but while the European forest extends southward till Mediterranean conditions intervene, close to the sea of that name, the Asiatic forest has its southern limit in about the latitude of London. ”

“ In speaking of plants we confined our attention exclusively to land plants, for the reason that aquatic plants are usually small in size, relatively simple in structure, of somewhat limited vertical distribution, owing to their dependence upon light, and of little direct importance to man. In considering animals, on the other hand, we cannot exclude the aquatic forms, which are often of great human importance. In many regions man depends largely, sometimes even exclusively, on the animals of the sea for his food. ”

“ As was to be expected from the climate and from the peculiar flora, the Mediterranean region possesses a richer fauna than central Europe, both as regards mammals and lower forms. Even the European portion shows considerable African influence.
A few words must be said about other land animals apart from mammals. In regard to birds it is noticeable that the habit of migration, and the fact that the greater part [160] of the continent of Europe lies on the direct line between the northern breeding grounds of many species and the southern winter quarters, gives Europe a very rich bird fauna. ”

“ Finally, linking Europe to temperate Asia, we have belts of steppe land, characterised by a luxuriant growth of grass in the early summer, and fitted by nature for pastoral industries, which do not thrive near the Mediterranean. Another way of putting the same facts would be to say that Europe proper is a region of temperate forest, linked to Africa by scrub land passing into desert, and to Asia by steppe land passing into desert.
The flora of North America, owing to the size of the continent, offers more resemblance to that of Asia than to Europe. ”

“ Regarding [182] for a moment the Eurasiatic continent as a whole, we may say that the old civilisations, both to the east and to the west, arose in the forest regions—in the monsoon forests to the east, in the drought-resisting forest or scrub of the west. The temperate forest of Asia has produced no great civilisation, and the civilisation of the temperate forest zone of Europe has owed much to the earlier civilisation of the Mediterranean, with which it has always had free communication. ”

“ The fact that the region is chiefly visited by the inhabitants of more northern climates in spring gives rise to a somewhat erroneous impression in regard to the plants. In spring the Mediterranean vegetation is at its best. The mild winters permit the plants which further north die down or cease to grow, to go on blooming. The rains so moisten the soil that the first warm days cause very rapid growth in those plants which finish their activities before the hot, dry summer begins. They must flower and seed in spring, and die down till the rains of autumn awaken them again. ”

“ We have seen that the northern hemisphere is the region where organic evolution has been most marked. It is, as it were, a great biological laboratory. On the other hand, in the southern hemisphere, which has fewer land masses to interfere with the circulation of the atmosphere, many physical phenomena occur in a more marked and orderly fashion than to the north. The westerly winds of the south blow with a force and a constancy which makes it impossible to compare them with the more variable westerlies of the north. ”

“ It is very easily grown, even on poor land, and in France replaces wheat where the conditions are unfavourable, or where agriculture is backward. It is not without interest to note that while its use in France as human food is an indication of extreme poverty, in the United States buckwheat cakes take a place as a luxury. Oatcakes in lowland Scotland, “black bread” in well-to-do households in Germany, are other similar instances of the reappearance of a despised food-stuff as a luxury. Such foods become luxuries when they can be used to supplement, not to replace, white bread. ”