The Earth as Modified by Human ActionMarsh, George P. (George Perkins)
History
The Earth as Modified by Human Action
Marsh, George P. (George Perkins)
Conservation of natural resources; Human geography; Nature -- Effect of human beings on; Physical geography
Our author states that, in 1796, a terrible inundation was produced in
the Indalself, which rises in the Storsjo in Jemtland, by drawing off
into it the waters of another lake near Ragunda. The flood destroyed
houses and fields; much earth was swept into the channel, and the water
made turbid and muddy; the salmon and the smaller fish forsook the river
altogether, and never returned. The banks of the river have never
regained their former solidity, and portions of their soil are still
continually falling into the water and destroying its purity.--Resa
genom Sverge, ii, p. 61.] Industrial operations are not less destructive
to fish which live or spawn in fresh water. Mill-dams impede their
migrations, if they do not absolutely prevent them, the sawdust from
lumber mills clogs their gills, and the thousand deleterious mineral
substances, discharged into rivers from metallurgical, chemical, and
manufacturing establishments, poison them by shoals. [Footnote: The
mineral water discharged from a colliery on the river Doon in Scotland
discolored the stones in the bed of the river, and killed the fish for
twenty miles below. The fish of the streams in which hemp is macerated
in Italy are often poisoned by the juices thus extracted from the
plant.-Dorotea, Sommario della storia dell' Alieutica, pp. 64, 65.] We
have little evidence that any fish employed as human food has naturally
multiplied in modern times, while all the more valuable tribes have been
immensely reduced in numbers. This reduction must have affected the more
voracious species not used as food by man, and accordingly the shark,
and other fish of similar habits, even when not objects of systematic
pursuit, are now comparatively rare in many waters where they formerly
abounded. The result is, that man has greatly reduced thenumbers of all
larger marine animals, and consequently indirectly favored the
multiplication of the smaller aquatic organisms which entered into their
nutriment. This change in the relations of the organic and inorganic
matter of the sea must have excercised an influence on the latter. What
that influence has been we cannot say, still less can we predict what it
will be hereafter; but its action is not for that reason the less
certain. [Footnote: Among the unexpected results of human action, the
destruction or multiplication of fish, as well as of other animals, is a
not unfrequent occurrence. Footnote: Williams, in his History of
Vermont, i., p. 140, records such a case of the increase of trout. In a
pond formed by damming a small stream to obtain water power for a
sawmill, and covering one thousand acres of primitive forest, the
increased supply of food brought within reach of the fish multiplied
them to that degree, that, at the head of the pond, where, in the
spring, they crowded together in the brook which supplied it, they were
taken by the hands at pleasure, and swine caught them without
difficulty. A single sweep of a small scoopnet would bring up half a
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