And even after death, Needham’s industry endures. In the press when he died,
the third part of volume 6 of Science and Civilisation in China, edited and
partly written by Christian Daniels et al. (Cambridge University Press,
£95/$150, ISBN 0 521 41999 9) deals with agro-industry, dwelling on
sugar cane and forestry. It’s sobering to reflect that even though the
importance of replanting forests was appreciated more than a thousand years ago
in China—as was the relationship between deforestation and
flooding—the knowledge is still largely ignored.
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