Necessity for Afforestation of the Surrounding. Areas Phe causes of the drought in the north and the water shortage in Hongkong were the subject of a Very able lecture delivered on November 14 in Shanghai before the members of the Aoyal Asiatic Bociety and their friends Dr. A. L. Englander. The mecting was presided over by the Rev. Dr. F. L. Hawks. Pott and the lecture was amply illustrated with no fewer than 59 most interest ing lantern slides, which showed virgin country, deserts in their snaking, the remnants of big towns, zmonumented buildings and walls the Gobi and Arabic deserts, old river beds, pottery hills, ete.
The speaker mentioned that, if someone were to place himself at a sufficient height above the earth and take a-cinematograph film, a very strange sight would tenet the eye. Whole continents, mountains and gens and great plains and hills would be seen to change, their forms like clay in a potter's hands. He went on to describe the south Asian islands, the Philippines, Japan and Borneo and suggested that they had been separated from the Asian continent during the present geological period.
The distribution of sweet water all over the continent showed immense variations, between the uttermost extremes, How Country is Denuded The silk and porcelain industry, goid the speaker, the _enormons Chinese river shipbuilding, even Chinese—sepulchral rites, could develop only in land covered with extensive forests, of which there are at present no traces. 'The destruction of vegetation by man stopped not with the cutting of. forests, for shrubs and underwoods were torn up and used. Everywhere in China, peasants were to be ween "going up' denuded mountain slopes to dig out the last shrubs and roots, Continuing, the speaker said the: two principal characters of the desert were dryness of the ground and the disappearance of relief, By comparison of the degree of Ahese, a relative estimation of the desert was obtained, "The Andrewy expedition to the Gobi desert foun water five or six yards down. Artesian wells in the" Sahara had 40 be dug 300 yds. before water was found. In the Gobi, the walls of Vuildings still stand, even some wooden rafters, but the last trac of what had been great towns an monuments of civilization had Tong' disappeared. Humanity had long forgotten the names of the peoples and the empires who flourished ters of thousands of years ago.
We totally forget the history of humanity itself, said Dr, Englaender. So we have forgotten how, through thousands of years, our remote ancestors lived in the present desert! countries. Nebulous, half mythical traditions tell of the migrations of people diverging like the rays of a from central Asia, It was Srom central Asia that Europeans migrated to the west, the Indians.to the south, the: Chinese and kindred races.to the east. All these migré tions have been escapes from desert Jands to new, well-watered and well afforestated ' lands. Even now, millions leave Shantung and Chili and migrate to the still well foresteq Manchuria, The ancestors <f these same Chinese migrated from the Gobi to Shantung and now some 1,000 years of culture have transformed these flowery lands into deserts and semi-deserts. The peasant, the tiller of toil, dies out or migrates, the nomade ekes out miserable existence from the old Jands which first become a steppe and after some centuries a desert. Not only in China is this happening Unt on the edge of every desert.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.