Such is the steamship of to-day but there is no doubt that the thousand foot boat is coming, which probably will cross the Atlantic ocean in less than four days if not in three. But the question is, where shall we put her, that is, where shall we dock her?
To build a thousand foot pier to accommodate her, appears like a good answer to this question, but the great difficulty is that there are United States Government regulations restricting the length of piers to 800 feet. Docking space along the shore of New York harbor is too valuable to permit the ship being berthed parallel to the shore, therefore vessels must dock at right angles to the shore. Some provisions must soon be made and the regulations as to dock lengths revised.
The thousand footer may be here in a couple of years or so. In the meantime the two 840 footers are already on the stocks at Belfast and are expected to arrive early in 1911. Before they come changes and improvements must be made in the docking and harbor facilities of the port of New York.
If higher speed is demanded, increased size is essential, since with even the best result every 100 horse-power added involves an addition to machinery weight of approximately 14 tons and to the area occupied of about 40 square feet. To accomplish this the ship must be as much larger in proportion.
The ship designer has to work within circumscribed limits. If he could make his vessel of any depth he might build much larger and there would be theoretically no limit to his speed: 40 knots an hour might be obtained as easily as the present maximum of 26, but in designing his ship he must remember that in the harbors of New York or Liverpool the channels are not much beyond 30 feet in depth. High speed necessitates powerful engines, but if the engines be too large there will not be space enough for coal to feed the furnaces. If the breadth of the ship is increased the speed is diminished, while on the other hand, if too powerful engines are put in a narrow vessel she will break her back. The proper proportions must be carefully studied as regards length, breadth, depth and weight so that the vessel will derive the greatest speed from her engines.
CHAPTER VII
WONDERFUL CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE
Mating Plants—Experiments of Burbank—What he has Accomplished.
In California lives a wonderful man. He has succeeded in doing more than making two blades of grass grow where grew but one. Yearly, daily in fact, this wizard of plant life is playing tricks on old Mother Nature, transforming her vegetable children into different shapes and making them no longer recognizable in their original forms. Like the fairies in Irish mythology, this man steals away the plant babies, but instead of leaving sickly elves in their places, he brings into the world exceedingly healthy or lusty youngsters which grow up into a full maturity, and develop traits of character superior to the ones they supplant. For instance he took away the ugly, thorny insipid cactus and replaced it by a beautiful smooth juicy one which is now making the western deserts blossom as the rose. The name of this man is Luther Burbank whose fame as a creator of new plants has become world wide.
The basic principle of Burbank's plant magic comes under two heads, viz.: breeding and selection. He mates two different species in such a way that they will propagate a type partaking of the natures of both but superior to either in their qualities. In order to effect the best results from mating, he is choice in his selection of species—the best is taken and the worst rejected. It is a universal law that the bad can never produce the good; consequently when good is desired, as is universally the case, bad must be eliminated. In his method, Burbank gives the good a chance to assert itself and at the same time takes away all opportunity from the bad. So that the latter cannot thrive but must decay and pass out of being. He takes two plants—they may be of the same species, but as a general rule he prefers to experiment with those of different species; he perceives that neither one in its present surroundings is putting forth what is naturally expected from it, that each is either retrograding in the scale of life or standing still for lack of encouragement to go forward. He knows that back of these plants is a long history of evolutions from primitive beginnings to their present stage just as in the case of man himself. 'Tis a far cry from the cliff-dweller wielding his stone-axe and roaming nude through the fields and forests after his prey—the wild beast—to the lordly creature of to-day—the product of long ages of civilization and culture, yet high as the state is to which man has been brought, in many cases he is hemmed in and surrounded by circumstances which preclude him from putting forth the best that is in him and showing his full possibilities to the world. The philosopher is often hidden in the ploughman and many a poor laborer toiling in corduroys and fustian at the docks, in the mills, or sweeping the streets may have as good a brain as Edison, but has not the opportunity to develop it and show its capabilities. The same analogy is applicable to plant life. Under adverse conditions a plant or vegetable cannot put forth its best efforts. In a scrawny, impoverished soil, and exhausted atmosphere, lacking the constituents of nurture, the plant will become dwarfed and unproductive, whereas on good ground and in good air, which have the succulent properties to nourish it the best results may be expected. The soil and the air, therefore, from which are derived the constituents of plant life, are indispensably necessary, but they are not the primal principles upon which that life depends for its being. The basis, the foundation, the origin of the life is the seed which germinates in the soil and evolves itself into the plant.