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THE EARTH AS MODIFIED BY HUMAN ACTION.
A NEW EDITION OF MAN AND NATURE.
BY
GEORGE P. MARSH.
"Not all the winds, and storms, and earthquakes, and seas, and seasons
of the world, have done so much to revolutionize the earth as MAN, the
power of an endless life, has done since the day he came forth upon it,
and received dominion over it."--H. Bushnell, Sermon on the Power of an
Endless Life.
1874.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
The object of the present volume is: to indicate the character and,
approximately, the extent of the changes produced by human action in the
physical conditions of the globe we inhabit; to point out the dangers of
imprudence and the necessity of caution in all operations which, on a
large scale, interfere with the spontaneous arrangements of the organic
or the inorganic world; to suggest the possibility and the importance of
the restoration of disturbed harmonies and the material improvement of
waste and exhausted regions; and, incidentally, to illustrate the
doctrine that man is, in both kind and degree, a power of a higher order
than any of the other forms of animated life, which, like him, are
nourished at the table of bounteous nature.
In the rudest stages of life, man depends upon spontaneous animal and
vegetable growth for food and clothing, and his consumption of such
products consequently diminishes the numerical abundance of the species
which serve his uses. At more advanced periods, he protects and
propagates certain esculent vegetables and certain fowls and quadrupeds,
and, at the same time, wars upon rival organisms which prey upon these
objects of his care or obstruct the increase of their numbers. Hence the
action of man upon the organic world tends to derange its original
balances, and while it reduces the numbers of some species, or even
extirpates them altogether, it multiplies other forms of animal and
vegetable life.
The extension of agricultural and pastoral industry involves an
enlargement of the sphere of man's domain, by encroachment upon the
forests which once covered the greater part of the earth's surface
otherwise adapted to his occupation. The felling of the woods has been
attended with momentous consequences to the drainage of the soil, to the
external configuration of its surface, and probably, also, to local
climate; and the importance of human life as a transforming power is,
perhaps, more clearly demonstrable in the influence man has thus exerted
upon superficial geography than in any other result of his material
effort.
Lands won from the woods must be both drained and irrigated; river-banks
and maritime coasts must be secured by means of artificial bulwarks
against inundation by inland and by ocean floods; and the needs of
commerce require the improvement of natural and the construction of
artificial channels of navigation. Thus man is compelled to extend over
the unstable waters the empire he had already founded upon the solid
land.
The upheaval of the bed of seas and the movements of water and of wind
expose vast deposits of sand, which occupy space required for the
convenience of man, and often, by the drifting of their particles,
overwhelm the fields of human industry with invasions as disastrous as
the incursions of the ocean. On the other hand, on many coasts,
sand-hills both protect the shores from erosion by the waves and
currents, and shelter valuable grounds from blasting sea-winds. Man,
therefore, must sometimes resist, sometimes promote, the formation and
growth of dunes, and subject the barren and flying sands to the same
obedience to his will to which he has reduced other forms of terrestrial
surface.
Besides these old and comparatively familiar methods of material
improvement, modern ambition aspires to yet grander achievements in the
conquest of physical nature, and projects are meditated which quite
eclipse the boldest enterprises hitherto undertaken for the modification
of geographical surface.
The natural character of the various fields where human industry has
effected revolutions so important, and where the multiplying population
and the impoverished resources of the globe demand new triumphs of mind
over matter, suggests a corresponding division of the general subject,
and I have conformed the distribution of the several topics to the
chronological succession in which man must be supposed to have extended
his sway over the different provinces of his material kingdom. I have,
then, in the introductory chapter, stated, in a comprehensive way, the
general effects and the prospective consequences of human action upon
the earth's surface and the life which peoples it. This chapter is
followed by four others in which I have traced the history of man's
industry as exerted upon Animal and Vegetable Life, upon the Woods, upon
the Waters, and upon the Sands; and to these I have added a concluding
chapter upon Man.
It is perhaps superfluous to add, what indeed sufficiently appears upon
every page of the volume, that I address myself not to professed
physicists, but to the general intelligence of observing and thinking
men; and that my purpose is rather to make practical suggestions than to
indulge in theoretical speculations more properly suited to a different
class from that for which I write.
GEORGE P. MARSH.
December 1, 1868.
PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION.
In preparing for the press an Italian translation of this work,
published at Florence in 1870, I made numerous corrections in the
statement of both facts and opinions; I incorporated into the text and
introduced in notes a large amount of new data and other illustrative
matter; I attempted to improve the method by differently arranging many
of the minor subdivisions of the chapters; and I suppressed a few
passages which teemed to me superfluous. In the present edition, which
is based on the Italian translation, I have made many further
corrections and changes of arrangement of the original matter; I have
rewritten a considerable portion of the work, and have made, in the text
and in notes, numerous and important additions, founded partly on
observations of my own, partly on those of other students of Physical
Geography, and though my general conclusions remain substantially the
same as those I first announced, yet I think I may claim to have given
greater completeness and a more consequent and logical form to the whole
argument
Since the publication of the original edition, Mr. Elisee Reclus, in the
second volume of his admirable work, La Terre (Paris, 1868), lately made
accessible to English-reading students, has treated, in a general way,
the subject I have undertaken to discuss. He has, however, occupied
himself with the conservative and restorative, rather than with the
destructive, effects of human industry, and he has drawn an attractive
and encouraging picture of the ameliorating influences of the action of
man, and of the compensations by which he, consciously or unconsciously,
makes amends for the deterioration which he has produced in the medium
he inhabits. The labors of Mr. Reclus, therefore, though aiming at a
much higher and wider scope than I have had in view, are, in this
particular point, a complement to my own. I earnestly recommend the work
of this able writer to the attention of my readers.
George P. Marsh
Rome, May 1, 1878.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY
Natural Advantages of the Territory of the Roman Empire--Physical Decay
of that Territory--Causes of the Decay--Reaction of Man on
Nature--Observation of Nature--Uncertainty of Our Historical Knowledge
of Ancient Climates--Uncertainty of Modern Meteorology--Stability of
Nature--Formation of Bogs--Natural Conditions Favorable to Geographical
Change--Destructiveness of Man--Human and Brute Action Compared--Limits
of Human Power--Importance of Physical Conservation and
Restoration--Uncertainty as to Effects of Human Action