Semi-weekly herald., 1911-10-09

ascribed the destruction of every pc
riod of civilization since the begin
ming of time, was the startling hy-
pothesis advanced by Russell L. Dunn
of San Francisco in his address before
the public lands convention yesterday
on 1.-THE Un-American Government
Accorded Alaska"
Due TO steadily increasing mean
temperature and to constantly de-
creasing precipitation, Dunn asserted
that the northern hemisphere gradu-
ally is entering new climatic zone,
which will render North America as
barren as the way from Dan to Beer
sheba, as the vast wastes Of Beluchis-
tan or the desert in which the Aztecs
and Mokis enacted their heroic strug-
Gle to preserve their civilization.
Dunn offers in support of his by
pothesis the existence today OF EVIL
dences of prehistoric irrigation works
and stone buildings in the region in
vaded by the Israelites in their forty
year migration from Egypt to Pal
estine, in Arizona and New Mexico,
in Beluchistan, Arabia, and Lybian
desert and in the Eastern Sahara.
"Irrigation," says Dunn, SIS the last
stand of man in his fight to preserve
his civilization. But man never has
preserved it, and never will achieve
more than to provide a temporary
civilization, which must inevitably fall
before the onrush of this relentless
climatic cycle. You know that the
people of Israel--600,000 000-traveled
with their flocks from Egypt to the
Palestine The journey occupied forty
years. There must have been fer
tility and vegetation in the region
they entered; otherwise they could
not have survived. That region to-
day has evidences of irrigation works
and stone buildings which were con-
sequent upon an increasing made
quacy of the natural pasturage to
provide for the population. Similar
evidences of those irrigation works
and prehistoric cities also exist in this
country.
"To put it another way, the nomadic
pastoral stage of human life was sue
ceeded by the stage in which people
settled in cities and cultivated the
soil with the assistance of irrigation
because decreasing rainfall decreased
the natural pasturage and forced the
artificial use of water to increase the
food output of the soil. The continu-
alton of the decrease of rainfall ul-
timately reduced the quantity of wa
ter which was at first available for
irrigation use to point where irri-
CATION was no longer practicable, and
the country became a desert.
ut is all very well to talk of pre-
serving the forests, but forests must
have certain annual precipitation in
order to thrive. In the Sierra in Cali
fornia there is ample precipitation and
there, after trees have been cut, others
spring up and grow sturdily, due to
the processes of nature. But in the
San Bernardino country to the south
once forest is cut it retains to ste
rility and all efforts at forestatior
are futile.
"These rises of temperature are sc
obvious that they have been observed
by everyone. In California, for in.
stance, heat prostration had never
been heard of until recently. Now
such happenings are quite frequent
And California's climate, instead Of
being temperate, as it always has
been supposed, is sub-tropical, rather
like the climate of Florida. Oul
isotherms of even temperature ar,
gradually moving northward with the
result that Alaska, which once was
forbidding, is year by yea: becoming
more habitable. In 1920 The Russian
navigators who visited Alaska founC
glaciers with terminals in the sea
which now, ninety years later, are Z
mile or more inland from the sea
This is due to the steadily rising o.
temperature.
Moreover, in 1896, number O
carcasses of mammoth werc found il
Siberia, on the banks OF the Ienesa
river, about 500 miles north Of tn,
tsansiberian railroad. These bodie
were in remarkable state of preser
vation and undigested food in thei
stomachs was eaten by dogs. Thi
disclosed the fact that the vel;eta
ton on which the mammoth mad sub
sisted was the same as the vegcta
tion in that region today. The an.
NAL must have been frozen from tbs
time it was overwhelmed by snow ant
killed by cold, all through the g'acin
epoch and until the present time. II
is obvious that If in the half million
years the temperature had raised, the
body would have become mortified ard
the contents would not now have been
good eating for dogs"
Dunn is one of the most prominent
engineers and geologis.s on tie Pa
cific coast. He was for time eIitor
Of the Mining and Scientific Press