Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, July 1899: Volume LV, No. 3, July 1899Various
Religion
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, July 1899: Volume LV, No. 3, July 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
FORESTRY, Professor Fernow said in his paper at the American
Association, is not, as it seems to be popularly believed,
"Woodman, spare that tree," but "Woodman, cut those trees
judiciously." The handling of a slowly maturing crop like forest
trees requires especial consideration of a problem quite unlike
any other that presents itself to the business man. The trees
ripen slowly, a full century often being necessary to the
complete development of growth. Obviously it would be inadvisable
to cut down the product and then wait a hundred years for further
income from the land; another system is necessary, where merely
the interest is taken, in trees which are in a condition to cut,
while the principal, the forest itself, remains always
practically intact.
Editor's Table.
_PRIMITIVE MAN._
Two articles contributed to the April and May numbers of the
Fortnightly Review by Mr. J. G. Frazer, the learned author of The
Golden Bough, and more recently of a monumental edition of Pausanias,
are worthy of the close attention of all who are interested in the
early history of mankind. The articles are entitled The Origin of
Totemism, and the object of the writer is to show that on this obscure
subject a flood of light has been shed by the lately published
researches of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen into the beliefs and
practices of the native tribes of central Australia, those tribes
being perhaps the best representatives now anywhere surviving of the
most primitive condition of the human race. Mr. Baldwin Spencer,
formerly a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, is at present Professor
of Biology in the University of Melbourne, while Mr. Gillen is a
special magistrate in South Australia, charged with the protection of
the aborigines. In their work, Mr. Frazer observes, "We possess for
the first time a full and authentic account of thoroughly primitive
savages living in the totem stage and practically unaffected by
European influence. Its importance," he adds, "as a document of human
history can, therefore, hardly be overestimated."
Evolution, it has often been remarked, and is again remarked by the
writer of these articles, is an outcome of the struggle for life, and
is rapid and vigorous or slow and feeble, according to the intensity
of the struggle and the number and variety of the competing elements.
Among the great land masses of our planet Australia is the smallest;
and, owing to this circumstance, and also to its physical
conformation, which renders large areas unfit for the maintenance of
life, population has been much restricted and competition has been at
a minimum. Hence the extremely backward and undeveloped condition of
its native tribes, a condition which enables us, as Mr. Frazer
observes, to detect humanity in the chrysalis stage, and mark the
first blind gropings of our race after liberty and light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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