The Environment of Harvard.

Professor Shaler gave an interesting talk last evening in the Fogg Lecture Room on "Environment of Harvard University" speaking particularly of the physical features of Massachusetts and their effect on the early colonists. He said in part:

Environment is a long word, somewhat obscure in meaning, but it has a valuable place as indicating a way of looking at man that is characteristic of our time. The old idea of an absolute creation of all life in the world lost hold during the upheaval of the French Revolution; and it was a French student who first suggested that man had risen to his present place by fitting himself to his surroundings. This was the origin of the theory afterward made so famous by Darwin. If it is true, then, that we can develop ourselves most fully by adaptation to surrounding conditions, it should be worth while for all who come to Cambridge to learn something about the nature of the neighboring country.

Anyone who has lived in the far West or in the valley of the Mississippi notices at once the amount of detail in eastern scenery, a detail quite lacking from the simple structure of the great plains. Not only is the rock formation varied and interesting, but an additional attraction lies in the fact that it is only a short time from a geological point of view since an ice-cap existed over all this region. Traces of it are too plain to be for a moment doubted. When the ice-sheet receded northward, the streams which came from under it deposited sand in great quantities as they approached the sea. These rivers flowed through ice arches under the glaciers; and remnants of them can still be seen in the low curving hills in some parts of the state. At the same time, it is worth remembering that we have near by all that is left of a mountain range, once as grand as any in the word, in the White Mountains and in detached peaks such as Monadnock.

Equally interesting, or even more so, is the sea with its stretch of coast line. Grander views may be had in other parts of the country, but nowhere can a clearer insight be had into the history of the action constantly taking place between sea and land. A little thought will show that natural or geological causes have a great influence on the action of man himself. Why, for example, did the Pilgrims place their settlement and their college in so flat and uninteresting a spot as Cambridge? Simply because elsewhere the land was so covered with glacial stones that the farmers had to build walls to get rid of them. In a similar manner, the geological formation of Massachusetts Bay made possible the fisheries which made our forefathers a sea-faring race.

In closing, Professor Shaler spoke of the charm of the region from an artistic point of view and illustrated both phases of his talk by stereopticon.