B. Animals.—Although animals are less important than plants, they influence man in a thousand ways. If there were no horses and oxen the prairies might have remained uncultivated, and in most parts of Europe and America the growth of a thick sod would make agriculture impossible. Without the sheep not only would our food supply be diminished, but we should not know where to turn for warm winter clothing. The only good substitute would be furs, but they, too, are derived from animals. Almost equally important in our daily lives are the cows, which give us the most perfect of all foods; while the hens that lay several billion eggs every year in the United States would be sadly missed if their cackle should forever cease. In many sections of Portuguese East Africa the tsetse fly not only kills all the horses, sheep, and cattle, but transmits to man a terrible wasting disease; while the malarial mosquito continually brings sickness and helps to make him ineffective. Even in our own land animals are harmful as well as helpful. The common or / 9..taey typhoid fly brings many dangerous diseases; and the disgusting ifat not only consumes hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of property each year, but also spreads the plague.
C. Man: How Man Responds to Geographic Surroundings. (a) Material Needs, and (b) Occupations.—The total effect of physical environment upon man is summed up in the last two columns of Fig. 1 on page 3. The first of these two columns divides the re sponses into four great classes. In studying the first class, material needs, we ask: How do man's geographical surroundings determine the materials which he uses to satisfy his physical needs? In the second class come man's occupations, and here we ask: How does man supply his physical needs, that is, what occupations does he follow for this purpose? (c) Efficiency.—While all men have material needs and all follow certain occupations in order to satisfy these needs, the energy which they put into their occupations varies enormously. Some are so lazy that they never work unless they are actually hungry, while others are so energetic that they work until they kill themselves. Such differences depend partly on race or inheritance, for some races appear to be naturally vigorous and especially gifted with brain power. The distribution of these races is a purely geographical matter. Nevertheless, it is not treated in this book, because the actual degree of ability among different races when placed in the same geographical surroundings and given exactly the same oppor tunities and training is not yet accurately known. Much of what is called racial character is due to the next item under efficiency; namely, health and energy, which depend largely on climate, but are in turn greatly modified by people's habits and especially by the way in which they spend their spare time, that is by their recreations.
(d) Higher Needs.—What man gets out of life is better measured by the way he supplies his higher needs—mental, esthetic and spiritual—than by the way he supplies his material needs. Every
group of people has at least an elementary form of government, education, science, religion, and art. In one sense these things are not geographical. Yet the direction which they take, the resources which support them, and the degree of efficiency with which they are developed all depend largely on geographical surroundings. Although the way in which these higher needs are satisfied is the best measure of civilization, all the other classes of responses also play an important part. Civilization rises high only when all the material needs are well satisfied; when all the occupations are represented in proper proportion; when the higher needs are recognized as even more important than the lower; and when the pursuit of both the higher and the lower needs is carried on with efficiency.
(a) How Geographical Surroundings Influence Man's Material Needs.—In order thoroughly to understand the people in any part of the world we need to be able to answer each of these questions: What do they eat? How do they dress? What kind of houses do they live in? What tools do they use? How do they travel and transport goods from place to place? The answers depend largely on geographical conditions. Everyone must have food, but the man who lives on a certain remote island in an unfrequented sea must live largely on sago, cocoanuts, and pork, the chief products of his island, for the location is too remote to allow him to get food from other regions. If the island takes the form of mountains perhaps he may not be able to raise crops easily; while the body of water around him may cause him to get most of his food from the sea. If the soil is rich, the climate warm and damp, the vegetation luxurious, and food animals relatively few, as in the Philippines, the people will live on rice and bananas; but if the soil is gravelly, the climate dry, the vegetation merely short-lived grasses, and the number of cattle relatively large we shall find people like the cowboys of western Argen tina who dry their jerked beef in the sun, and eat it with corn and beans.
So, too, with clothing and shelter. The thin cotton clothing, straw sandals, and thatched huts of the Hindu farmers could scarcely be used by the miners of Alaska for two reasons. In the first place, it is not easy to get the materials for such clothing and shelter in the far North, and in the second place, even if they could easily be pro cured they would not afford enough protection from the weather. The Yukon miner wants clothing of fur and wool, heavy leather and a warm house of solid logs with the cracks well stuffed to keep out the cold. The tools and the means of transportation in India and Alaska show an equal diversity. The little hoes, wooden plows, ox-goads, and rude ox-carts of the Hindu farmer would be of little use to the northern miner who wants drills, hammers, and picks with which to dig into the solid rock, and freight cars or river boats in which to send away his ore.