Page 7 Advertisements Column 5

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 143674, 19 December 1911, Page 7

Dr. W. J. M‘Gee, in examining the widely-differing estimates of the ultimate'population of the United States, which the latest computer, Henry Gannett, puts at 25G.00U,U00 ninety years hence —points out that a practical limit to tho productivity and habituality of a country is fixed by limitation in its water supply. In arid lands like Eg}*pt careful calculations hare been made of the amount of water necessary to make land productive. An acre requires so ninny inches of water a year, let us eay dO, before it will raise enough vegetable food to keep one person. Thirty inches is under the mark, because man docs not live by bread alone, but on meat, and the animals which give him that have also to be sustained by vegetable food. Tho man who eats 2001 b. of bread and 2001 b. of beef a year, drinks in tho same time a ton of water, and the equivalent of 400 tons of water which have gone to make the bread, and 4000 tons of water which have gone to rear tho beef —4401 tons of water in all. Consequently, the water supply of a country in which man is to live must always be cnual to something over 4000 tons per individual. The annual rainfall of tho countries of tho northern hemisphere is about 30 inches, only half enough to fertilise one acre to a sufficient extent to keep a man. .Roundly speaking, perhaps, one might say that the world’s water supply is sufficient to keep a. population of one man to every two acres. Christmas Cards, Sunday School &P3ZO books, texts, tickets, Miller’s Doldcto. All at Bishop’s. Many inferior sardines are packed in American cotton-seed oil, a common imitation that is injurious. “CROSSED FISH’’ ©r© canned in the finest Lucca.