This section is from "The Horticulturist, And Journal Of Rural Art And Rural Taste", by P. Barry, A. J. Downing, J. Jay Smith, Peter B. Mead, F. W. Woodward, Henry T. Williams. Also available from Amazon: Horticulturist and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste.
The World a Workshop; or the Physical Relationship of man to the earth. By Thomas Ewbank, 12 mo. New York, 1855.
Mr. Ewbank is a thoughtful and suggestive writer; his work on "Hydraulics and Mechanics" met with less public appreciation than it deserved, perhaps because people generally were not aware that it was very amusing, having popularised his subjects so as to interest the least scientific. It is a book to be read and passed down to ones descendant*, as full of facts no less than entertainment.
The present work is much smaller, and assumes more the form of essays upon man and his connection with matter, being designed to prove that our relations to earth have clearly adapted us to labor in the great workshop, designed and literally fitted up for the cultivation and application of chemical and mechanical science as the basis of human development. All, he contends, are workers in and modifiers of matter. To man, in common with the rest, a task is given which, if fully understood, would place in a new and a better light this much abused orb of ours. It is the opinion of many that decay has seised its vitals, that its resources are approaching exhaustion, and the arts their climax; but our author strenuously and sensibly contends that in reality it is a spring of physical truths which man can never run dry. Chemistry and Physics, as the exponents of inorganic bodies, and Botany and Zoology of the organic, will pour, and continue to pour forth new elements, combinations, forms, forces, and motions.
We have had pleasing illustrations of this in our own day, which, so far from inducing fear of the font failing, are prophetic of its fulness.
What then, he asks, was it that so conspicuously was to mark man's connection with the earth, and more than anything else proclaim him lord or lessee of it? It was the character he was to assume as a Manipulator of matter. The earth was to be a manufactory and he a manufacturer. It was to furnish him with unwrought material, while the sounds of his implements acting upon it were to swell till their reverberations rolled over the globe. The materials are placed in so accessible a manner that they are, all ready for nee. Iron and copper are not made in large mountains, or if they are he can scarcely nee them, witness the masses of the latter on Lake Superior which it has required all his ingenuity and contrivance to remove, whereas in the form of ores as most generally found throughout the world, they are within the means given him to work. If all the rich materials so lavishly scattered everywhere, the most useful the most abundant, if they are indispensable to him and yet useless till manipulated, it must needs follow that the earth was designed for a Factory. If it were wholly vegetable, it would be a Firm; if its products were objects ready for use, a Bazaar. But almost the whole is mineral - inert, unshapen, and unwrought, while even animal and vegetable substances require elaboration.
In the pursuit of truths to enforce his argument, Mr. Ewbank is sometimes extremely happy and generally perfectly lucid, but the theory which he is working cut with such enthusiasm, occasionally leads him beyond his subject into the realms of abstruse speculation, where however, it is not unpleasant to follow. Geology is considered with reference to the production of materials for the wants of man; the chapter on " the arrangement of the earth's materials in strata" will arrest the reader; that on fire is new and curious; the adaptations of things in the matter of fire, with a view to keep it in human hands, small as they seem, have a bearing on the general economy of the world; the conditions necessary to the evolution of a spark by friction and to nourish it into flame, are such as to prevent any serious results from natural abraisicns. Had the necessary amount or intensity of friction been double what it is, man had made but little use of fire, perhaps, to this day. Had it been less than it is, we might scarcely have known wood as a fuel, since nature might then have acted the part of an incendiary, and fired it as fast as it grew, The verge of danger is approached nearer in hot than in cold climates, and yet we find that where vegetation is parched like stubble, the air glowing as in an oven, resins cozing out of some trees, and heat and inflammability impressed on all, the violent collision of trees with trees, and stems with stems, inflames neither the reed swamps of India, nor the corn brakes of America, the pitch pines of the North, nor the unctuous boles of equinoctial regions, so nice are the adjustments that prevent in such cases ignition.
If it were not for these the world would be in constant danger; the tread of an elephant or buffalo's foot on dry reeds and grass, or the rushing of their bodies through jungles, would fire them. Were the amount of friction required to produce fire less than it is, great care would be indispensable in threshing and stacking grain and even in working it. Indeed, as things are, the line between artificial attrition that produces fire and natural attrition that does not, is so fine as to excite wonder that a barrier so frail should be so powerful in preventing conflagrations. But the adaptations and adjustments of everything in this wonderful workshop to the work, are everywhere, and abound where least suspected.
As in the case of metals, timber is provided in manageable masses. The size of trees is adapted for human, not Cyclopean artisans. Had they generally approached the Gigantic Sequoia what could have been done with them - with logs, one of which laid along the pavement of some streets, would fill them to the roofs of three-story houses 1 The difficulty of felling, transporting, handling, and slitting such into beams or into boards, would have been seriously embarrassing, whereas the most useful trees are never too large for easy control, rarely exceeding four feet in diameter, and a four average would gjve from fifteen to eighteen inches nearly. The Mahogany tree is remarkable for its magnitude; and yet the largest recorded log was only seventeen feet long by fifty-four and sixty-four inches.
Another feature of the world's timber is - the heaviest woods are not found in the largest bolls, but generally in the smallest, a provision that vastly facilitates man's control over them. Fir is only as heavy as oak, while ebony, lignum-vitae, and box are rather shrubs than trees. Hickory is rarely seen a foot in diameter, and exceedingly few sticks of Rosewood are met with as large. Thus the largest trees are light and easily worked. Had they been light and porous as the cork tree, or heavy and dense as lignum-vitae they had been of comparatively little use to man. But we are ordained to be elaborators in wood as well as in the metals; and hence the facilities for its acquisition, its varieties of masses, properties and adaptations.
Had the nature of minerals been such as to admit of the labour of man in their pre. paration, it had certainly been required of him, but the processes of their formation are so slow, that had the tenure of his life extended into centuries, he could not have biassed their development But the producing powers of vegetation are so active as to induce greater changes in a day than do those that form minerals in a thousand years, so that he has every opportunity to impress himself on them.
But is it his duty and has he the power ? undoubtedly; although it may be there are some who think he cannot meddle with nature's works without marring them. A great mistake. In this department she produces nothing absolutely perfect without him, and she will not. Designed for a nursery, it requires nurserymen. Forests and praries are at large, what neglected farms are in little. They cover the ground with things growing rank and wild, and choking each other; they are what he himself is before being drawn out of the jungles of ignorance and improved by cultivation. The principles at work, and the soil they work on are at his service; but like tools in a machinists shop, their profitable employment rests with himself. They will cover his fields with wheat and fill his gardens with fruit, if he so wills, by properly exciting them. If he fold his arms in indolence, they will expend themselves in weeds; superior fruits will never be produced without work joined to intelligence; spontaneous growth shows the working of nature's agencies, but not their perfect working; that is left for man to bring out.
Such is an outline of our author's views, often in his own words ; as we observed in the commencement, they are suggestive to thinking minds, and we wish we had the opportunity of presenting the little volume to thousands.
 
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