Reflections in Bullough's Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England.

• Author: SIMES, DEBRA
• Position: Review

Reflections in Bullough's Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England By Diana Muir University Press of New England May 2000, $26.00

With New England as the frame of her loom, Diana Muir has used a single shuttle--the dynamic of increasing human population and finite natural resources --to weave the economic and environmental stories of the past four centuries in this corner of North America. Reflections in Bullough's Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England suggests that the region has, repeatedly, reached and then exceeded the population that could be sustained by then-current economic subsistence strategies. It illuminates how New Englanders, from indigenous inhabitants to contemporary denizens, have answered the population-resource dilemma, and in so doing, generated both intentional outcomes and unintended--and potent --consequences.

Muir uses the reflective capacity of Bullough's Pond and its eastern Massachusetts surrounds (which include her kitchen window) as touchstone for her connection to the historical material, and as local lens through which to sample the mutual impacts that ecosystem and humankind have weathered. She does it beautifully, demonstrating how, from its beginning as a byproduct of the construction of a 1664 gristmill on Smelt Brook, Bullough's Pond has been consumed (commercial ice), modified (dredging), and otherwise impacted (development-related flooding) by human conceits.

A rich romp through New England's history, the book distills a massive amount of data to chronicle the development of agriculture; fishing and shipping trades; craft trades precedent to the Industrial Revolution; transportation infrastructure; applied energy sources (animal, wood, hydro, fossil fuels); early public works for water and sewage; and more, more, more! Muir travels the causeways among the micro, macro, and meta worlds, rendering a path invisible to the casual observer, but wholly engrossing to the curious reader. In one moment, she identifies a paradigm shift (the emergence of scientific rationalism) that helps set the Stage for the coming (industrial) revolution, and in the next, gives an account of the intricacies of shoe-making innovations, or the role of clock-making in the evolution of mass production, machine tooling, and interchangeable parts. The course of the narrative is delightfully unpredictable.

As the reader gambols through this history of technological and strategic developments, Muir artfully explains their...