Ellsworth Huntington Quotes

A journey of four hundred and thirty miles can be made in any part of the United States, but in Turkey it takes as many days.

After washing there was no place to pour the water except out of the window onto the heads of the people in the streets, which is the proper place to throw everything that is not wanted.

America forms the longest and straightest bone in the earth's skeleton.

As a matter of fact, an ordinary desert supports a much greater variety of plants than does either a forest or a prairie.

Except on their southern borders the great northern forests are not good as a permanent home for man.

Fertile soil, level plains, easy passage across the mountains, coal, iron, and other metals imbedded in the rocks, and a stimulating climate, all shower their blessings upon man.

Geologists are rapidly becoming convinced that the mammals spread from their central Asian point of origin largely because of great variations in climate.

History in its broadest aspect is a record of man's migrations from one environment to another.

In fact, the history of North America has been perhaps more profoundly influenced by man's inheritance from his past homes than by the physical features of his present home.

Man could not stay there forever. He was bound to spread to new regions, partly because of his innate migratory tendency and partly because of Nature's stern urgency.

Nevertheless most of the evergreen forests of the north must always remain the home of wild animals and trappers, a backward region in which it is easy for a great fur company to maintain a practical monopoly.

No part of the world can be truly understood without a knowledge of its garment of vegetation, for this determines not only the nature of the animal inhabitants but also the occupations of the majority of human beings.

The buffalo is a surprisingly stupid animal.

The evidence points to central Asia as man's original home, for the general movement of human migrations has been outward from that region and not inward.

The geysers and hot springs of the Yellowstone are another proof of recent volcanic activity.

The human organism inherits so delicate an adjustment to climate that, in spite of man's boasted ability to live anywhere, the strain of the frozen North eliminates the more nervous and active types of mind.

Thus the races, though alike in their physical response to climate, may possibly be different in their mental response because they have approached America by different paths.