Niches

“ Properties measured in lower atmospheric niches will include a wide range of parameters -pressure, temperature, humidity, cloud cover, wind speed, rainfall, atmospheric components, etc. Each property will have its measured values processed within the three-dimensional niche in a useful niche-dependent manner. This may be used to extract data showing, for example, the average rainfall in a niche area, its gradient toward niche boundaries, patchiness of the rainfall pattern, and higher-order characteristics. ”

“ What the trapper was to the fur trade, the prospector was to the mining era that ushered civilization into the wilds with a blare of dance-halls and wine and wassail and greed. Ragged, poor, roofless, grubstaked by 'pardner' or outfitter on a basis of half profit, the prospector stands as the eternal type of the trail-maker for finance. ”

“ Tracts made inaccessible to man and at the same time more fertile. Some speculator comes and dams up the stream below, and lo! the water stands over all meadows, making impassable morasses and dead trees for fish hawks,—a wild, stagnant, fenny country, the last gasp of wildness before it yields to the civilization of the factory,—to cheer the eyes of the factory people and educate them. It makes a little wilderness above the factories.
The woodbine now begins to hang red about the maples and other trees. ”

“ The industry of the people seemed more like the habits of birds building their nests on every point of vantage, or of bees constructing their precious combs in the trunks of old trees or in the clefts of the rocks, than the industry of human creatures, which requires some little "verge and scope" for its manifestations. ”

“ Thus, to the tenant in looking out for a farm, or to the capitalist in seeking an eligible investment, a knowledge of the mutual relations of geology and agriculture will often prove of the greatest assistance. Yet how little is such really useful knowledge diffused among either class of men—how little are either tenants or proprietors guided by it in their choice of the localities in which they desire to live! ”

“ But a race, once produced, is no more a fixed and immutable entity than the stock whence it sprang; variations arise among its members, and as these variations are transmitted like any others, new races may be developed out of the pre-existing ones ad infinitum, or, at least, within any limit at present determined. Given sufficient time and sufficiently careful selection, and the multitude of races which may arise from a common stock is as astonishing as are the extreme structural differences which they may present. ”

“ But in the annals of mining discovery, how often has the resources of a great mine been made known and available to human enterprise by the crude, simple apparatus of a travelling prospector, and how many hopeless and worthless "properties" have swallowed the contributions of a gullable public through the ornamental reports of the skilled and cultured proprietor of an elaborate laboratory! ”

“ But, in truth, a wider, freer, sunnier orb, that they themselves have created for us, is moving beside us, though all unseen by our timid and reluctant eyes. Their mills and factories by thousands heap up food and clothing for the world, but unless it is distributed it is useless. ”

“ My endeavour has been to supply practical and useful information in language as free from technicalities as possible, so as to adapt it to the ordinary miner, mill operator and prospector, many of whom have had no scientific training. Some of the expedients are original devices educed by what we are told is the mother of inventions; others are hints given by practical old prospectors who had met with difficulties which would be the despair of a man brought up within reach of forge, foundry, machine shop, or tradesmen generally. ”

“ Community of form after all only implies connection, and often merely trade-connection which may be second, third, or fourth hand; but a careful investigation of the material will often reveal the actual locality of manufacture, and when this has been fixed for a number of centres, the main lines of trade and the artistic influence exerted by one locality upon another can be estimated with some degree of accuracy. ”

“ Its mighty growth of thistles and centauries draws them all to me from everywhere around. Never, in my insect-hunting memories, have I seen so large a population at a single spot; all the trades have [216] made it their rallying-point. Here come hunters of every kind of game, builders in clay, weavers of cotton goods, collectors of pieces cut from a leaf or the petals of a flower, architects in paste-board, plasterers mixing mortar, carpenters boring wood, miners digging underground galleries, workers in goldbeater’s skin, and many more. ”

“ Otherwise, a now industry always grows up when the competition of the factory becomes too acute -- a wonderful, hardly suspected adaptability being displayed by the small industries; or else the rural artisans resort to some form of intensive farming, gardening, etc., and in the meantime some other industry makes its appearance. ”

“ The more distinct the boundaries of the land, the less to conquer and occupy outside them, the more industrious, amid the growing population, must have been the culture of the ground and the irrigation of it, the more actively must the artisans have pursued their trade, and industry must have developed with a greater vigour as the number of mouths requiring food increased. ”

“ But the order of nature does not always exactly correspond with the classification of the naturalist. His system must necessarily be precise, formal, and defined. One tribe ends off abruptly, and is immediately succeeded by another, with different functions and structure, and dignified with a separate name. But in the order of creation, such abrupt demarcations are few, for if they exist in the present economy, they can not unfrequently be filled up from the existences of the past. ”

“ Every morning you may see a hundred and fifty to two hundred ploughs issue from both establishments; these spread over the plain and till an immense expanse of land. Carts drawn by bullocks, big mules, or superb horses are ceaselessly exporting the products of the fields, the meadows, or the orchards. ”

“ The developments under scrutiny affect surviving pre-literate societies-the nomadic, animistic population of Sudan, the tribes of the Brazilian Amazon forests, remote populations of Africa, Asia, Australia-as they affect the literate and post- literate. Without going into the details of the process, we should be aware that commodities coming from such societies, including the commodity of labor, no less than their needs and expectations, are traded on the global market. ”

“ The specialization which accompanies the division of labour has important geographical consequences, for it necessitates communication between communities and the interchange of their products. Trade makes it possible to work mineral resources in localities where food can only be grown with great Density of population. ”

“ One of the purposes of the introduction of a degree of economic geology, to separate the sheep from the goats, may be accomplished in another way,—namely, by the establishment and maintenance of high standards of admission and high aims on the part of the various professional societies having to do with geology and mining. ”

“ In previous years, when capital was not so plentiful, and when land was much cheaper and slower to sell, the agent drove the buyer over the land from corner to corner, cross-wise and angling, and the buyer would get out here and there and with a spade dig into the ground, and be convinced as to the quality of the soil. ”

“ It has been an evolution which, beginning with a tribe whose members severally perform the same actions each for himself, ends with a civilized community whose members severally perform different actions for each other; and an evolution which has transformed the solitary producer of any one commodity into a combination of producers who, united under a master, take separate parts in the manufacture of such commodity. ”

“ To devote attention from the start merely to practical and commercial features, rather than to scientific principles, brings the student at once into competition with mining engineers, business men, accountants, and others, who are often able to handle the purely empirical features of an economic or practical kind better than the geologist. ”

“ Village and city had grown up in the centers of trade. The mechanic arts had slowly made their way. Change vast, weighty, permanent—not sudden, but orderly growth—fruit of seed sown, but none the less marvelous for that. ”

“ The homes, fields, forests, mill-streams, and mining tracts of the whites holding our subdued territory, or even regions still in the depths of the unreclaimed wilderness, are secured to them by a system of deeds, carefully drawn with bounds and measurements, with indications of previous ownership, and the terms of transfer and possession. ”

“ If a man rents a field for cultivation and produces no grain in that field, they shall call him to account for doing no work in that field, and he shall give to the owner of the field grain similar to that of adjacent fields. ”

“ The Vacant Lot Cultivation system is a school wherein gardeners are taught a trade (to most of them a new trade) , farming, which offers employment for more people than all the other trades and professions combined: a trade susceptible of wide diversification and offering many fields for specializing. ”

“ And all the people who were making them looked clean and happy.
'I wish we had factories like those,' Philip said. 'Our factories are so ugly. Helen says so.'
'That's because all your factories are money factories,' said Mr. Noah, 'though they're called by all sorts of different names. Every one here has to make something that isn't just money or for money—something useful and beautiful.'
'Even you?' said Lucy. ”

“ The vastness and completeness of this huge manufactory, or, in fact, village of manufactures, illustrated and explained in all its parts and all its mysterious modes of operation, formed a subject of amazement in our own as well as the Indians’ minds—difficult to be described, and never to be forgotten. ”

“ A subsidiary resource is to point out the kind's nearest natural affinities. For instance, in the binary Nomenclature of Botany and of Zoology, the name of every species consists of the name of the natural group next above, with a word added expressive of some quality in the nature or mode of discovery, or what not, of the particular species itself. ”

“ The niche was entirely filled by a thing which resembled a colossal and wretched door; it was a vast, formless assemblage of perpendicular planks, the upper ones being broader than the lower, bound together by long transverse strips of iron. ”

“ Let us notice the influence of this tribal organization on husbandry and property. The regular economic arrangement was an open-field one based on a three-field and similar systems. The furlongs were divided into intermixed strips with compulsory rotation on the usual pattern. And it is interesting to notice that in these economic surroundings indivisible holdings corresponding to the organic unities required for efficient agriculture arose of themselves. ”

“ We use the term “commercial tribes” in a wide sense, as including not only those tribes among which many people subsist by trading, but those that exchange a considerable part of their produce for foreign merchandise. For instance, a tribe that grows corn for export is a commercial tribe in the sense we attach to the word. ”

“ In short, before actual field exploration is begun, intelligent consideration of the economic factors may go far toward narrowing the field and toward converging efforts along profitable lines. Looked at broadly, this result is usually accomplished by the natural working of general laws of supply and demand ”

“ Personal property, moreover, comes to be more and more differentiated from the possessions of the group. Trade, which in primitive times was almost entirely restricted to secret barter, becomes public, and is finally widened into tribal commerce. ”

“ We know of many instances, in the higher no less than in the lower cultures, corresponding to what the biologist calls symbiosis—a condition where distinct communities or countries persist in a division of labor for mutual benefit, each trading some of its intellectual or material products for equivalents secured from the other. ”

“ They also manufacture, according to their aboriginal art, both for their own consumption, and for the purpose of traffic, a species of earthenware not much inferior to the coarse crockery of our common potters. ”

“ He must familiarize himself not only with the material of the locality he is working in but must also know as much as possible about that of other regions, for it is of the last importance that trade-objects be recognized wherever they occur. ”

“ Our Lord the King hath a mine in the bailiwick of Magna Dene, and he takes from each workman who shall gain every three days three semes of mine ore, 1d. per week. And when a mine is first of all found, our Lord the King shall have one man working with the other workman in the mine, and hire him for 2d. a day, and he shall have such profit as he may find by the one workman. Item, our Lord the King shall have from thence each week, six semes of mine ore, which is called ‘Lawe ore.’ And he shall give for this to the workmen VId. ”

“ The only modern innovation is [8] an occasional 'caster,' or sea tramp, plying its way up the coast to pick up a precarious profit for its owners by carrying cargoes of evil-smelling trade from the fishing villages along the shore. ”

“ We depend principally upon our farms for subsistence, but some of our number are good mechanics—blacksmiths, carpenters, masons, shoemakers, etc., etc. We have found the raising of stock very profitable, and can show some of the finest specimens of horse-flesh to be found on this continent, and we find a ready market for all our products. ”