CHAPTER VI.

PROJECTED OR POSSIBLE GEOGRAPHICAL CHANGES BY MAN.

CUTTING OF MARINE ISTHMUSES--THE SUEZ CANAL--CANAL ACROSS ISTHMUS OF

DARIEN--CANALS TO THE DEAD SEA--MARITIME CANALS IN GREECE--CANAL OF

SAROS--CAPE COD CANAL--DIVERSION OF THE NILE--CHANGES IN THE CASPIAN--

IMPROVEMENTS IN NORTH AMERICAN HYDROGRAPHY--DIVERSION OF RHINE--

DRAINING OF THE ZUIDERZEE--WATERS OF THE KARST--SUBTERRANEAN WATERS

OF GREECE--SOIL BELOW ROCK--COVERING ROCKS WITH EARTH--WADIES OF ARABIA

PETRAEA--INCIDENTAL EFFECTS OF HUMAN ACTION--RESISTANCE TO GREAT NATURAL

FORCES--EFFECTS OF MINING--ESPY'S THEORIES--RIVER SEDIMENT--NOTHING

SMALL IN NATURE.

_Cutting of Marine Isthmuses._

Besides the great enterprises of physical transformation of which I have

already spoken, other works of internal improvement or change have been

projected in ancient and modern times, the execution of which would

produce considerable, and, in some cases, extremely important,

revolutions in the face of the earth. Some of the schemes to which I

refer are evidently chimerical; others are difficult, indeed, but cannot

be said to be impracticable, though discouraged by the apprehension of

disastrous consequences from the disturbance of existing natural or

artificial arrangements; and there are still others, the accomplishment

of which is ultimately certain, though for the present forbidden by

economical considerations.

When we consider the number of narrow necks or isthmuses which separate

gulfs and bays of the sea from each other, or from the main ocean, and

take into account the time and cost, and risks of navigation which

would be saved by executing channels to connect such waters, and thus

avoiding the necessity of doubling long capes and promontories, or even

continents, it seems strange that more of the enterprise and money which

have been so lavishly expended in forming artificial rivers for internal

navigation should not have been bestowed upon the construction of

maritime canals. Many such have been projected in early and in recent

ages, and some trifling cuts between marine waters have been actually

made, but no work of this sort, possessing real geographical or even

commercial importance, has yet been effected.

These enterprises are attended with difficulties and open to objections,

which are not, at first sight, obvious. Nature guards well the chains by

which she connects promontories with mainlands, and binds continents

together. Isthmuses are usually composed of adamantine rock or of

shifting sands--the latter being much the more refractory material to

deal with. In all such works there is a necessity for deep excavation

below low-water mark--always a matter of great difficulty; the

dimensions of channels for sea-going ships must be much greater than

those of canals of inland navigation; the height of the masts or smoke

pipes of that class of vessels would often render bridging impossible,

and thus a ship canal might obstruct a communication more important than

that which it was intended to promote; the securing of the entrances of

marine canals and the construction of ports at their termini would in

general be difficult and expensive, and the harbors and the channel

which connected them would be extremely liable to fill up by deposits

washed in from sea and shore. Besides all this, there is, in many cases,

an alarming uncertainty as to the effects of joining together waters

which nature has put asunder. A new channel may deflect strong currents

from safe courses, and thus occasion destructive erosion of shores

otherwise secure, or promote the transportation of sand or slime to

block up important harbors, or it may furnish a powerful enemy with

dangerous facilities for hostile operations along the coast.

Nature sometimes mocks the cunning and the power of man by spontaneously

performing, for his benefit, works which he shrinks from undertaking,

and the execution of which by him she would resist with unconquerable

obstinacy. A dangerous sand bank, that all the enginery of the world

could not dredge out in a generation, may be carried off in a night by a

strong river flood, or a current impelled by a violent wind from an

unusual quarter, and a passage scarcely navigable by fishing boats may

be thus converted into a commodious channel for the largest ship that

floats upon the ocean. In the remarkable gulf of Liimfjord in Jutland,

nature has given a singular example of a canal which she alternately

opens as a marine strait, and, by shutting again, converts into a

fresh-water lagoon. The Liimfjord was doubtless originally an open

channel from the Atlantic to the Baltic between two islands, but the

sand washed up by the sea blocked up the western entrance, and built a

wall of dunes to close it more firmly. This natural dike, as we have

seen, has been more than once broken through, and it is perhaps in the

power of man, either permanently to maintain the barrier, or to remove

it and keep a navigable channel constantly open. If the Liimfjord

becomes an open strait, the washing of sea sand through it would perhaps

block up some of the belts and small channels now important for the

navigation of the Baltic, and the direct introduction of a tidal current

might produce very perceptible effects on the hydrography of the

Cattegat.

_The Suez Canal._

If the Suez Canal--the greatest and most truly cosmopolite physical

improvement ever undertaken by man--shall prove successful, it will

considerably affect the basins of the Mediterranean and of the Red Sea,

though in a different manner, and probably in a less degree than the

diversion of the current of the Nile from the one to the other--to which

I shall presently refer--would do. It is, indeed, conceivable, that if a

free channel be once cut from sea to sea, the coincidence of a high tide

and a heavy south wind might produce a hydraulic force that would

convert the narrow canal into an open strait. In such a case, it is

impossible to estimate, or even to foresee, the consequences which might

result from the unobstructed mingling of the flowing and ebbing currents

of the Red Sea with the almost tideless waters of the Mediterranean.

There can be no doubt, however, that they would be of a most important

character as respects the simply geographical features and the organic

life of both. But the shallowness of the two seas at the termini of the

canal, the action of the tides of the one and the currents of the other,

and the nature of the intervening isthmus, render the occurrence of such

a cataclysm in the highest degree improbable. The obstruction of the

canal by sea sand at both ends is a danger far more difficult to guard

against and avert, than an irruption of the waters of either sea.

There is, then, no reason to expect any change of coast lines or of

natural navigable channels as a direct consequence of the opening of the

Suez Canal, but it will, no doubt, produce very interesting revolutions

in the animal and vegetable population of both basins. The

Mediterranean, with some local exceptions--such as the bays of

Calabria, and the coast of Sicily so picturesquely described by

Quatrefages[481]--is comparatively poor in marine vegetation, and in

shell as well as in fin fish. The scarcity of fish in some of its gulfs

is proverbial, and you may scrutinize long stretches of beach on its

northern shores, after every south wind for a whole winter, without

finding a dozen shells to reward your search. But no one who has not

looked down into tropical or subtropical seas can conceive the amazing

wealth of the Red Sea in organic life. Its bottom is carpeted or paved

with marine plants, with zoophytes and with shells, while its waters are

teeming with infinitely varied forms of moving life. Most of its

vegetables and its animals, no doubt, are confined by the laws of their

organization to warmer temperatures than that of the Mediterranean, but

among them there must be many, whose habitat is of a wider range, many

whose powers of accommodation would enable them to acclimate themselves

in a colder sea.

We may suppose the less numerous aquatic fauna and flora of the

Mediterranean to be equally capable of climatic adaptation, and hence,

when the canal shall be opened, there will be an interchange of the

organic population not already common to both seas. Destructive species,

thus newly introduced, may diminish the numbers of their proper prey in

either basin, and, on the other hand, the increased supply of

appropriate food may greatly multiply the abundance of others, and at

the same time add important contributions to the aliment of man in the

countries bordering on the Mediterranean.

A collateral feature of this great project deserves notice as possessing

no inconsiderable geographical importance. I refer to the conduit or

conduits constructed from the Nile to the isthmus, primarily to supply

fresh water to the laborers on the great canal, and ultimately to serve

as aqueducts for the city of Suez, and for the irrigation and

reclamation of a large extent of desert soil. In the flourishing days of

the Egyptian empire, the waters of the Nile were carried over important

districts east of the river. In later ages, most of this territory

relapsed into a desert, from the decay of the canals which once

fertilized it. There is no difficulty in restoring the ancient channels,

or in constructing new, and thus watering not only all the soil that the

wisdom of the Pharaohs had improved, but much additional land. Hundreds

of square miles of arid sand waste would thus be converted into fields

of perennial verdure, and the geography of Lower Egypt would be thereby

sensibly changed. If the canal succeeds, considerable towns will grow up

at once at both ends of the channel, and at intermediate points, all

depending on the maintenance of aqueducts from the Nile, both for water

and for the irrigation of the neighboring fields which are to supply

them with bread. Important interests will thus be created, which will

secure the permanence of the hydraulic works and of the geographical

changes produced by them, and Suez, or Port Said, or the city at Lake

Timsah, may become the capital of the government which has been so long

established at Cairo.

_Canal across the Isthmus of Darien._

The most colossal project of canalization ever suggested, whether we

consider the physical difficulties of its execution, the magnitude and

importance of the waters proposed to be united, or the distance which

would be saved in navigation, is that of a channel between the Gulf of

Mexico and the Pacific, across the Isthmus of Darien. I do not now speak

of a lock canal, by way of the Lake of Nicaragua or any other route--for

such a work would not differ essentially from other canals, and would

scarcely possess a geographical character--but of an open cut between

the two seas. It has been by no means shown that the construction of

such a channel is possible, and, if it were opened, it is highly

probable that sand bars would accumulate at both entrances, so as to

obstruct any powerful current through it. But if we suppose the work to

be actually accomplished, there would be, in the first place, such a

mixture of the animal and vegetable life of the two great oceans as I

have stated to be likely to result from the opening of the Suez Canal

between two much smaller basins. In the next place, if the channel were

not obstructed by sand bars, it might sooner or later be greatly widened

and deepened by the mechanical action of the current through it, and

consequences, not inferior in magnitude to any physical revolution which

has taken place since man appeared upon the earth, might result from it.

What those consequences would be is in a great degree matter of pure

conjecture, and there is much room for the exercise of the imagination

on the subject; but, as more than one geographer has suggested, there is

one possible result which throws all other conceivable effects of such a

work quite into the shade. I refer to changes in the course of the two

great oceanic rivers, the Gulf Stream and the corresponding current on

the Pacific side of the isthmus. The warm waters which the Gulf Stream

transports to high latitudes and then spreads out, like an expanded

hand, along the eastern shores of the Atlantic, give out, as they cool,

heat enough to raise the mean temperature of Western Europe several

degrees. In fact, the Gulf Stream is the principal cause of the

superiority of the climate of Western Europe over those of Eastern

America and Eastern Asia in the corresponding latitudes. All the

meteorological conditions of the former region are in a great measure

regulated by it, and hence it is the grandest and most beneficent of all

purely geographical phenomena. We do not yet know enough of the laws

which govern the movements of this mighty flood of warmth and life to be

able to say whether its current would be perceptibly affected by the

severance of the Isthmus of Darien; but as it enters and sweeps round

the Gulf of Mexico, it is possible that the removal of the resistance of

the land which forms the western shore of that sea, might allow the

stream to maintain its original westward direction, and join itself to

the tropical current of the Pacific.

The effect of such a change would be an immediate depression of the mean

temperature of Western Europe to the level of that of Eastern America,

and perhaps the climate of the former continent might become as

excessive as that of the latter, or even a new "ice period" be

occasioned by the withdrawal of so important a source of warmth from the

northern zones. Hence would result the extinction of vast multitudes of

land and sea plants and animals, and a total revolution in the domestic

and rural economy of human life in all those countries from which the

New World has received its civilized population. Other scarcely less

startling consequences may be imagined as possible; but the whole

speculation is too dreary, distant, and improbable to deserve to be long

indulged in.[482]

_Canals to the Dead Sea._

The project of Captain Allen for opening a new route to India by cuts

between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, and between the Dead Sea and

the Red Sea, presents many interesting considerations.[483] The

hypsometrical observations of Bertou, Roth, and others, render it highly

probable, if not certain, that the watershed in the Wadi-el-Araba

between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea is not less than three hundred feet

above the mean level of the latter, and if this is so, the execution of

a canal from the one sea to the other is quite out of the question. But

the summit level between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, near Jezreel,

is believed to be little, if at all, more than one hundred feet above

the sea, and the distance is so short that the cutting of a channel

through the dividing ridge would probably be found by no means an

impracticable undertaking. Although, therefore, we have no reason to

believe it possible to open a navigable channel to the east by way of

the Dead Sea, there is not much doubt that the basin of the latter might

be made accessible from the Mediterranean.

The level of the Dead Sea lies 1,316.7 feet below that of the ocean. It

is bounded east and west by mountain ridges, rising to the height of

from 2,000 to 4,000 feet above the ocean. From its southern end, a

depression called the Wadi-el-Araba extends to the Gulf of Akaba, the

eastern arm of the Red Sea. The Jordan empties into its northern

extremity, after having passed through the Lake of Tiberias at an

elevation of 663.4 feet above the Dead Sea, or 653.3 below the

Mediterranean, and drains a considerable valley north of the lake, as

well as the plain of Jericho, which lies between the lake and the sea.

If the waters of the Mediterranean were admitted freely into the basin

of the Dead Sea, they would raise its surface to the general level of

the ocean, and consequently flood all the dry land below that level

within the basin.

I do not know that accurate levels have been taken in the valley of the

Jordan above the Lake of Tiberias, and our information is very vague as

to the hypsometry of the northern part of the Wadi-el-Araba. As little

do we know where a contour line, carried around the basin at the level

of the Mediterranean, would strike its eastern and western borders. We

cannot, therefore, accurately compute the extent of now dry land which

would be covered by the admission of the waters of the Mediterranean, or

the area of the inland sea which would be thus created. Its length,

however, would certainly exceed one hundred and fifty miles, and its

mean breadth, including its gulfs and bays, could scarcely be less than

fifteen, perhaps even twenty. It would cover very little ground now

occupied by civilized or even uncivilized man, though some of the soil

which would be submerged--for instance, that watered by the Fountain of

Elisha and other neighboring sources--is of great fertility, and, under

a wiser government and better civil institutions, might rise to

importance, because, from its depression, it possesses a very warm

climate, and might supply Southeastern Europe with tropical products

more readily than they can be obtained from any other source. Such a

canal and sea would be of no present commercial importance, because they

would give access to no new markets or sources of supply; but when the

fertile valleys and the deserted plains east of the Jordan shall be

reclaimed to agriculture and civilization, these waters would furnish a

channel of communication which might become the medium of a very

extensive trade.

Whatever might be the economical results of the opening and filling of

the Dead Sea basin, the creation of a new evaporable area, adding not

less than 2,000 or perhaps 3,000 square miles to the present fluid

surface of Syria, could not fail to produce important meteorological

effects. The climate of Syria would be tempered, its precipitation and

its fertility increased, the courses of its winds and the electrical

condition of its atmosphere modified. The present organic life of the

valley would be extinguished, and many tribes of plants and animals

would emigrate from the Mediterranean to the new home which human art

had prepared for them. It is possible, too, that the addition of 1,300

feet, or forty atmospheres, of hydrostatic pressure upon the bottom of

the basin might disturb the equilibrium between the internal and the

external forces of the crust of the earth at this point of abnormal

configuration, and thus produce geological convulsions the intensity of

which cannot be even conjectured.

_Maritime Canals in Greece._

A maritime canal executed and another projected in ancient times, the

latter of which is again beginning to excite attention, deserve some

notice, though their importance is of a commercial rather than a

geographical character. The first of these is the cut made by Xerxes

through the rock which connects the promontory of Mount Athos with the

mainland; the other, a navigable canal through the Isthmus of Corinth.

In spite of the testimony of Herodotus and Thucydides, the Romans

classed the canal of Xerxes among the fables of "mendacious Greece," and

yet traces of it are perfectly distinct at the present day through its

whole extent, except at a single point where, after it had become so

choked as to be no longer navigable, it was probably filled up to

facilitate communication by land between the promontory and the country

in the rear of it.

If the fancy kingdom of Greece shall ever become a sober reality, escape

from its tutelage and acquire such a moral as well as political status

that its own capitalists--who now prefer to establish themselves and

employ their funds anywhere else rather than in their native land--have

any confidence in the permanency of its institutions, a navigable

channel will no doubt be opened between the gulfs of Lepanto and AEgina.

The annexation of the Ionian Islands to Greece will make such a work

almost a political necessity, and it would not only furnish valuable

facilities for domestic intercourse, but become an important channel of

communication between the Levant and the countries bordering on the

Adriatic, or conducting their trade through that sea.

As I have said, the importance of this latter canal and of a navigable

channel between Mount Athos and the continent would be chiefly

commercial, but both of them would be conspicuous instances of the

control of man over nature in a field where he has thus far done little

to interfere with her spontaneous arrangements. If they were constructed

upon such a scale as to admit of the free passage of the water through

them, in either direction, as the prevailing winds should impel it, they

would exercise a certain influence on the coast currents, which are

important as hydrographical elements, and also as producing abrasion of

the coast and a drift at the bottom of seas, and hence would be entitled

to a higher rank than simply as artificial means of transit.

_Canal of Saros._

It has been thought practicable to cut a canal across the peninsula of

Gallipoli from the outlet of the Sea of Marmora into the Gulf of Saros.

It may be doubted whether the mechanical difficulties of such a work

would not be found insuperable; but when Constantinople shall recover

the important political and commercial rank which naturally belongs to

her, the execution of such a canal will be recommended by strong reasons

of military expediency, as well as by the interests of trade. An open

channel across the peninsula would divert a portion of the water which

now flows through the Dardanelles, diminish the rapidity of that

powerful current, and thus in part remove the difficulties which

obstruct the navigation of the strait. It would considerably abridge the

distance by water between Constantinople and the northern coast of the

AEgean, and it would have the important advantage of obliging an enemy to

maintain two blockading fleets instead of one.

_Cape Cod Canal._

The opening of a navigable cut through the narrow neck which separates

the southern part of Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts from the Atlantic,

was long ago suggested, and there are few coast improvements on the

Atlantic shores of the United States which are recommended by higher

considerations of utility. It would save the most important coasting

trade of the United States the long and dangerous navigation around Cape

Cod, afford a new and safer entrance to Boston harbor for vessels from

Southern ports, secure a choice of passages, thus permitting arrivals

upon the coast and departures from it at periods when wind and weather

might otherwise prevent them, and furnish a most valuable internal

communication in case of coast blockade by a foreign power. The

difficulties of the undertaking are no doubt formidable, but the expense

of maintenance and the uncertainty of the effects of currents setting

through the new strait are still more serious objections.

_Diversion of the Nile._

Perhaps the most remarkable project of great physical change, proposed

or threatened in earlier ages, is that of the diversion of the Nile from

its natural channel, and the turning of its current into either the

Libyan desert or the Red Sea. The Ethiopian or Abyssinian princes more

than once menaced the Memlouk sultans with the execution of this

alarming project, and the fear of so serious an evil is said to have

induced the Moslems to conciliate the Abyssinian kings by large

presents, and by some concessions to the oppressed Christians of

Egypt.[484] Indeed, Arabic historians affirm that in the tenth century

the Ethiopians dammed the river, and, for a whole year, cut off its

waters from Egypt. The probable explanation of this story is to be found

in a season of extreme drought, such as have sometimes occurred in the

valley of the Nile. About the beginning of the sixteenth century,

Albuquerque the "Terrible" revived the scheme of turning the Nile into

the Red Sea, with the hope of destroying the transit trade through Egypt

by way of Kesseir. In 1525 the King of Portugal was requested by the

Emperor of Abyssinia to send him engineers for that purpose; a successor

of that prince threatened to attempt the project about the year 1700,

and even as late as the French occupation of Egypt, the possibility of

driving out the intruder by this means was suggested in England.

It cannot be positively affirmed that the diversion of the waters of the

Nile to the Red Sea is impossible. In the chain of mountains which

separates the two valleys, Brown found a deep depression or wadi,

extending from the one to the other, at no great elevation above the bed

of the river. The Libyan desert is so much higher than the Nile below

the junction of the two principal branches at Khartum, that there is no

reason to believe a new channel for their united waters could be found

in that direction; but the Bahr-el-Abiad flows through, if it does not

rise in, a great table land, and some of its tributaries are supposed to

communicate in the rainy season with branches of great rivers flowing in

quite another direction. Hence it is probable that a portion at least of

the waters of this great arm of the Nile--and perhaps a quantity the

abstraction of which would be sensibly felt in Egypt--might be sent to

the Atlantic by the Niger, lost in the inland lakes of Central Africa,

or employed to fertilize the Libyan sand wastes.

Admitting the possibility of turning the whole river into the Red Sea,

let us consider the probable effect of the change. First and most

obvious is the total destruction of the fertility of Middle and Lower

Egypt, the conversion of that part of the valley into a desert, and the

extinction of its imperfect civilization, if not the absolute

extirpation of its inhabitants. This is the calamity threatened by the

Abyssinian princes and the ferocious Portuguese warrior, and feared by

the sultans of Egypt. Beyond these immediate and palpable consequences

neither party then looked; but a far wider geographical area, and far

more extensive and various human interests, would be affected by the

measure. The spread of the Nile during the annual inundation covers, for

many weeks, several thousand square miles with water, and at other

seasons of the year pervades the same and even a larger area with

moisture by infiltration. The abstraction of so large an evaporable

surface from the southern shores of the Mediterranean could not but

produce important effects on many meteorological phenomena, and the

humidity, the temperature, the electrical condition and the atmospheric

currents of Northeastern Africa might be modified to a degree that would

sensibly affect the climate of Europe.

The Mediterranean, deprived of the contributions of the Nile, would

require a larger supply, and of course a stronger current, of water from

the Atlantic through the Straits of Gibraltar; the proportion of salt it

contains would be increased, and the animal life of at least its

southern borders would be consequently modified; the current which winds

along its southern, eastern, and northeastern shores would be diminished

in force and volume, if not destroyed altogether, and its basin and its

harbors would be shoaled by no new deposits from the highlands of inner

Africa.

In the much smaller Red Sea, more immediately perceptible, if not

greater, effects, would be produced. The deposits of slime would reduce

its depth, and perhaps, in the course of ages, divide it into an inland

and an open sea; its waters would be more or less freshened, and its

immensely rich marine fauna and flora changed in character and

proportion, and, near the mouth of the river, perhaps even destroyed

altogether; its navigable channels would be altered in position and

often quite obstructed; the flow of its tides would be modified by the

new geographical conditions; the sediment of the river would form new

coast lines and lowlands, which would be covered with vegetation, and

probably thereby produce sensible climatic changes.

_Changes in the Caspian._

The Russian Government has contemplated the establishment of a nearly

direct water communication between the Caspian Sea and the Sea of Azoff,

partly by natural and partly by artificial channels, and there are now

navigable canals between the Don and the Volga; but these works, though

not wanting in commercial and political interest, do not possess any

geographical importance. It is, however, very possible to produce

appreciable geographical changes in the basin of the Caspian by the

diversion of the great rivers which flow from Central Russia. The

surface of the Caspian is eighty-three feet below the level of the Sea

of Azoff, and its depression has been explained upon the hypothesis that

the evaporation exceeds the supply derived, directly and indirectly,

from precipitation, though able physicists now maintain that the sinking

of this sea is due to a subsidence of its bottom from geological causes.

At Tsaritsin, the Don, which empties into the Sea of Azoff, and the

Volga, which pours into the Caspian, approach each other within ten

miles. Near this point, by means of open or subterranean canals, the Don

might be turned into the Volga, or the Volga into the Don. If we suppose

the whole or a large proportion of the waters of the Don to be thus

diverted from their natural outlet and sent down to the Caspian, the

equilibrium between the evaporation from that sea and its supply of

water might be restored, or its level even raised above its ancient

limits. If the Volga were turned into the Sea of Azoff, the Caspian

would be reduced in dimensions until the balance between loss and gain

should be reestablished, and it would occupy a much smaller area than at

present. Such changes in the proportion of solid and fluid surface would

have some climatic effects in the territory which drains into the

Caspian, and on the other hand, the introduction of a greater quantity

of fresh water into the Sea of Azoff would render that gulf less saline,

affect the character and numbers of its fish, and perhaps be not wholly

without sensible influence on the water of the Black Sea.

_Improvements in North American Hydrography._

We are not yet well enough acquainted with the geography of Central

Africa, or of the interior of South America, to conjecture what

hydrographical revolutions might there be wrought; but from the fact

that many important rivers in both continents drain extensive table

lands, of very moderate inclination, there is reason to suppose that

important changes in the course of rivers might be accomplished. Our

knowledge of the drainage of North America is much more complete, and it

is certain that there are numerous points where the courses of great

rivers, or the discharge of considerable lakes, might be completely

diverted, or at least partially directed into different channels.

The surface of Lake Erie is 565 feet above that of the Hudson at Albany,

and it is so near the level of the great plain lying east of it, that it

was found practicable to supply the western section of the canal, which

unites it with the Hudson, with water from the lake, or rather from the

Niagara which flows out of it. Hence a channel might be constructed,

which would draw off into the valley of the Genesee any desirable

proportion of the water naturally discharged by the Niagara. The

greatest depth of water yet sounded in Lake Erie is but two hundred and

seventy feet, the mean depth one hundred and twenty. Open canals

parallel with the Niagara, or directly toward the Genesee, might be

executed upon a scale which would exercise an important influence on the

drainage of the lake, if there were any adequate motive for such an

undertaking. Still easier would it be to create additional outlets for

the waters of Lake Superior at the Saut St. Mary--where the river which

drains the lake descends twenty-two feet in a single mile--and thus

produce incalculable effects, both upon that lake and upon the great

chain of inland waters which communicate with it.

The summit level between Lake Michigan and the Des Plaines, a tributary

of the Mississippi, is only twenty-seven feet above the lake, and the

intervening distance is but a very few miles. It has often been proposed

to cut an open channel across this ridge, and there is no doubt of the

practicability of the project. Were this accomplished, although such a

cut would not, of itself, form a navigable canal, a part of the waters

of Lake Michigan would be contributed to the Gulf of Mexico, instead of

to that of St. Lawrence, and the flow might be so regulated as to keep

the Illinois and the Mississippi at flood at all seasons of the year.

The increase in the volume of these rivers would augment their velocity

and their transporting power, and consequently, the erosion of their

banks and the deposit of slime in the Gulf of Mexico, while the

introduction of a larger body of cold water into the beds of these

rivers would very probably produce a considerable effect on the animal

life that peoples them. The diversion of water from the common basin of

the great lakes through a new channel, in a direction opposite to their

natural discharge, would not be absolutely without influence on the St.

Lawrence, though probably the effect would be too small to be in any way

perceptible.

_Diversion of the Rhine._

The interference of physical improvements with vested rights and ancient

arrangements, is a more formidable obstacle in old countries than in

new, to enterprises involving anything approaching to a geographical

revolution. Hence such projects meet with stronger opposition in Europe

than in America, and the number of probable changes in the face of

nature in the former continent is proportionally less. I have noticed

some important hydraulic improvements as already executed or in progress

in Europe, and I may refer to some others as contemplated or suggested.

One of these is the diversion of the Rhine from its present channel

below Ragatz, by a cut through the narrow ridge near Sargans, and the

consequent turning of its current into the Lake of Wallenstadt. This

would be an extremely easy undertaking, for the ridge is but twenty

feet above the level of the Rhine, and hardly two hundred yards wide.

There is no present adequate motive for this diversion, but it is easy

to suppose that it may become advisable within no long period. The

navigation of the Lake of Constance is rapidly increasing in importance,

and the shoaling of the eastern end of that lake by the deposits of the

Rhine may require a remedy which can be found by no other so ready means

as the discharge of that river into the Lake of Wallenstadt. The

navigation of this latter lake is not important, nor is it ever likely

to become so, because the rocky and precipitous character of its shores

renders their cultivation impossible. It is of great depth, and its

basin is capacious enough to receive and retain all the sediment which

the Rhine would carry into it for thousands of years.

_Draining of the Zuiderzee._

I have referred to the draining of the Lake of Haarlem as an operation

of great geographical as well as economical and mechanical interest. A

much more gigantic project, of a similar character, is now engaging the

attention of the Netherlandish engineers. It is proposed to drain the

great salt-water basin called the Zuiderzee. This inland sea covers an

area of not less than two thousand square miles, or about one million

three hundred thousand acres. The seaward half, or that portion lying

northwest of a line drawn from Enkhuizen to Stavoren, is believed to

have been converted from a marsh to an open bay since the fifth century

after Christ, and this change is ascribed, partly if not wholly, to the

interference of man with the order of nature. The Zuiderzee communicates

with the sea by at least six considerable channels, separated from each

other by low islands, and the tide rises within the basin to the height

of three feet. To drain the Zuiderzee, these channels must first be

closed and the passage of the tidal flood through them cut off. If this

be done, the coast currents will be restored approximately to the lines

they followed fourteen or fifteen centuries ago, and there can be little

doubt that an appreciable effect will thus be produced upon all the

tidal phenomena of that coast, and, of course, upon the maritime

geography of Holland.

A ring dike and canal must then be constructed around the landward side

of the basin, to exclude and carry off the fresh-water streams which now

empty into it. One of these, the Ijssel, a considerable river, has a

course of eighty miles, and is, in fact, one of the outlets of the

Rhine, though augmented by the waters of several independent

tributaries. These preparations being made, and perhaps transverse dikes

erected at convenient points for dividing the gulf into smaller

portions, the water must be pumped out by machinery, in substantially

the same way as in the case of the Lake of Haarlem. No safe calculations

can be made as to the expenditure of time and money required for the

execution of this stupendous enterprise, but I believe its

practicability is not denied by competent judges, though doubts are

entertained as to its financial expediency. The geographical results of

this improvement would be analogous to those of the draining of the Lake

of Haarlem, but many times multiplied in extent, and its meteorological

effects, though perhaps not perceptible on the coast, could hardly fail

to be appreciable in the interior of Holland.

_Waters of the Karst._

The singular structure of the Karst, the great limestone plateau lying

to the north of Trieste, has suggested some engineering operations which

might be attended with sensible effects upon the geography of the

province. I have described this table land as, though now bare of

forests, and almost of vegetation, having once been covered with woods,

and as being completely honeycombed by caves through which the drainage

of that region is conducted. Schmidl has spent years in studying the

subterranean geography and hydrography of this singular district, and

his discoveries, and those of earlier cave-hunters, have led to various

proposals of physical improvement of a novel character. Many of the

underground water courses of the Karst are without visible outlet, and,

in some instances at least, they, no doubt, send their waters, by deep

channels, to the Adriatic.[485] The city of Trieste is very

insufficiently provided with fresh water. It has been thought

practicable to supply this want by tunnelling through the wall of the

plateau, which rises abruptly in the rear of the town, until some

subterranean stream is encountered, the current of which can be

conducted to the city. More visionary projectors have gone further, and

imagined that advantage might be taken of the natural tunnels under the

Karst for the passage of roads, railways, and even navigable canals. But

however chimerical these latter schemes may seem, there is every reason

to believe that art might avail itself of these galleries for improving

the imperfect drainage of the champaign country bounded by the Karst,

and that stopping or opening the natural channels might very much modify

the hydrography of an extensive region.

_Subterranean Waters of Greece._

There are parts of continental Greece which resemble the Karst and the

adjacent plains in being provided with a natural subterranean drainage.

The superfluous waters run off into limestone caves called _catavothra_

([Greek: katabothra]). In ancient times, the entrances to the catavothra

were enlarged or partially closed as the convenience of drainage or

irrigation required, and there is no doubt that similar measures might

be adopted at the present day with great advantage both to the salubrity

and the productiveness of the regions so drained.

_Soil below Rock._

One of the most singular changes of natural surface effected by man is

that observed by Beechey and by Barth at Lin Tefla, and near Gebel

Genunes, in the district of Ben Gasi, in Northern Africa. In this region

the superficial stratum originally consisted of a thin sheet of rock

covering a layer of fertile earth. This rock has been broken up, and,

when not practicable to find use for it in fences, fortresses, or

dwellings, heaped together in high piles, and the soil, thus bared of

its stony shell, has been employed for agricultural purposes.[486] If we

remember that gunpowder was unknown at the period when these remarkable

improvements were executed, and of course that the rock could have been

broken only with the chisel and wedge, we must infer that land had at

that time a very great pecuniary value, and, of course, that the

province, though now exhausted, and almost entirely deserted by man, had

once a dense population.

_Covering Rock with Earth._

If man has, in some cases, broken up rock to reach productive ground

beneath, he has, in many other instances, covered bare ledges, and

sometimes extensive surfaces of solid stone, with fruitful earth,

brought from no inconsiderable distance. Not to speak of the Campo Santo

at Pisa, filled, or at least coated, with earth from the Holy Land, for

quite a different purpose, it is affirmed that the garden of the

monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai is composed of Nile mud,

transported on the backs of camels from the banks of that river. Parthey

and older authors state that all the productive soil of the Island of

Malta was brought over from Sicily.[487] The accuracy of the

information may be questioned in both cases, but similar practices, on a

smaller scale, are matter of daily observation in many parts of Southern

Europe. Much of the wine of the Moselle is derived from grapes grown on

earth carried high up the cliffs on the shoulders of men. In China, too,

rock has been artificially covered with earth to an extent which gives

such operations a real geographical importance, and the accounts of the

importation of earth at Malta, and the fertilization of the rocks on

Mount Sinai with slime from the Nile, may be not wholly without

foundation.

_Wadies of Arabia, Petraea._

In the latter case, indeed, river sediment might be very useful as a

manure, but it could hardly be needed as a soil; for the growth of

vegetation in the wadies of the Sinaitic Peninsula shows that the

disintegrated rock of its mountains requires only water to stimulate it

to considerable productiveness. The wadies present, not unfrequently,

narrow gorges, which might easily be closed, and thus accumulations of

earth, and reservoirs of water to irrigate it, might be formed which

would convert many a square mile of desert into flourishing date gardens

and cornfields. Not far from Wadi Feiran, on the most direct route to

Wadi Esh-Sheikh, is a very narrow pass called by the Arabs El Bueb (El

Bab) or, The Gate, which might be securely closed to a very considerable

height, with little labor or expense. Above this pass is a wide and

nearly level expanse, containing a hundred acres, perhaps much more.

This is filled up to a certain regular level with deposits brought down

by torrents before the Gate, or Bueb, was broken through, and they have

now worn down a channel in the deposits to the bed of the wadi. If a dam

were constructed at the pass, and reservoirs built to retain the winter

rains, a great extent of valley might be rendered cultivable.

_Incidental Effects of Human Action._

I have more than once alluded to the collateral and unsought

consequences of human action as being often more momentous than the

direct and desired results. There are cases where such incidental, or,

in popular speech, accidental, consequences, though of minor importance

in themselves, serve to illustrate natural processes; others, where, by

the magnitude and character of the material traces they leave behind

them, they prove that man, in primary or in more advanced stages of

social life, must have occupied particular districts for a longer period

than has been supposed by popular chronology. "On the coast of Jutland,"

says Forchhammer, "wherever a bolt from a wreck or any other fragment of

iron is deposited in the beach sand, the particles are cemented

together, and form a very solid mass around the iron. A remarkable

formation of this sort was observed a few years ago in constructing the

sea wall of the harbor of Elsineur. This stratum, which seldom exceeded

a foot in thickness, rested upon common beach sand, and was found at

various depths, less near the shore, greater at some distance from it.

It was composed of pebbles and sand, and contained a great quantity of

pins, and some coins of the reign of Christian IV, between the beginning

and the middle of the seventeenth century. Here and there, a coating of

metallic copper had been deposited by galvanic action, and the presence

of completely oxydized metallic iron was often detected. An

investigation undertaken by Councillor Reinhard and myself, at the

instance of the Society of Science, made it in the highest degree

probable that this formation owed its origin to the street sweepings of

the town, which had been thrown upon the beach, and carried off and

distributed by the waves over the bottom of the harbor."[488] These and

other familiar observations of the like sort show that a sandstone reef,

of no inconsiderable magnitude, might originate from the stranding of a

ship with a cargo of iron,[489] or from throwing the waste of an

establishment for working metals into running water which might carry it

to the sea.

Parthey records a singular instance of unforeseen mischief from an

interference with the arrangements of nature. A landowner at Malta

possessed a rocky plateau sloping gradually toward the sea, and

terminating in a precipice forty or fifty feet high, through natural

openings in which the sea water flowed into a large cave under the rock.

The proprietor attempted to establish salt works on the surface, and cut

shallow pools in the rock for the evaporation of the water. In order to

fill the salt pans more readily, he sank a well down to the cave

beneath, through which he drew up water by a windlass and buckets. The

speculation proved a failure, because the water filtered through the

porous bottom of the pans, leaving little salt behind. But this was a

small evil, compared with other destructive consequences that followed.

When the sea was driven into the cave by violent west or northwest

winds, it shot a _jet d'eau_ through the well to the height of sixty

feet, the spray of which was scattered far and wide over the neighboring

gardens and blasted the crops. The well was now closed with stones, but

the next winter's storms hurled them out again, and spread the salt

spray over the grounds in the vicinity as before. Repeated attempts were

made to stop the orifice, but at the time of Parthey's visit the sea had

thrice burst through, and it was feared that the evil was without

remedy.[490]

I have mentioned the great extent of the heaps of oyster and other

shells left by the American Indians on the Atlantic coast of the United

States. Some of the Danish kitchen-middens, which closely resemble them,

are a thousand feet long, from one hundred and fifty to two hundred

wide, and from six to ten high. These piles have an importance as

geological witnesses, independent of their bearing upon human history.

Wherever the coast line appears, from other evidence, to have remained

unchanged in outline and elevation since they were accumulated, they are

found near the sea, and not more than about ten feet above its level. In

some cases they are at a considerable distance from the beach, and in

these instances, so far as yet examined, there are proofs that the coast

has advanced in consequence of upheaval or of fluviatile or marine

deposit. Where they are altogether wanting, the coast seems to have sunk

or been washed away by the sea. The constancy of these observations

justifies geologists in arguing, where other evidence is wanting, the

advance of land or sea respectively, or the elevation or depression of

the former, from the position or the absence of these heaps alone.

Every traveller in Italy is familiar with Monte Testaccio, the mountain

of potsherds, at Rome; but this deposit, large as it is, shrinks into

insignificance when compared with masses of similar origin in the

neighborhood of older cities. The castaway pottery of ancient towns in

Magna Graecia composes strata of such extent and thickness that they have

been dignified with the appellation of the ceramic formation. The Nile,

as it slowly changes its bed, exposes in its banks masses of the same

material, so vast that the population of the world during the whole

historical period would seem to have chosen this valley as a general

deposit for its broken vessels.

The fertility imparted to the banks of the Nile by the water and the

slime of the inundations, is such that manures are little employed.

Hence much domestic waste, which would elsewhere be employed to enrich

the soil, is thrown out into vacant places near the town. Hills of

rubbish are thus piled up which astonish the traveller almost as much as

the solid pyramids themselves. The heaps of ashes and other household

refuse collected on the borders and within the limits of Cairo were so

large, that the removal of them by Ibrahim Pacha has been looked upon as

one of the great works of the age.

The soil near cities, the street sweepings of which are spread upon the

ground as manure, is perceptibly raised by them and by other effects of

human industry, and in spite of all efforts to remove the waste, the

level of the ground on which large towns stand is constantly elevated.

The present streets of Rome are twenty feet above those of the ancient

city. The Appian way between Rome and Albano, when cleared out a few

years ago, was found buried four or five feet deep, and the fields along

the road were elevated nearly or quite as much. The floors of many

churches in Italy, not more than six or seven centuries old, are now

three or four feet below the adjacent streets, though it is proved by

excavations that they were built as many feet above them.

_Resistance to Great Natural Forces._

I have often spoken of the greater and more subtile natural forces, and

especially of geological agencies, as powers beyond human guidance or

resistance. This is no doubt at present true in the main, but man has

shown that he is not altogether impotent to struggle with even these

mighty servants of nature, and his unconscious as well as his deliberate

action may in some cases have increased or diminished the intensity of

their energies. It is a very ancient belief that earthquakes are more

destructive in districts where the crust of the earth is solid and

homogeneous, than where it is of a looser and more interrupted

structure. Aristotle, Pliny the elder, and Seneca believed that not only

natural ravines and caves, but quarries, wells, and other human

excavations, which break the continuity of the terrestrial strata and

facilitate the escape of elastic vapors, have a sensible influence in

diminishing the violence and preventing the propagation of the earth

waves. In all countries subject to earthquakes this opinion is still

maintained, and it is asserted that, both in ancient and in modern

times, buildings protected by deep wells under or near them have

suffered less from earthquakes than those the architects of which have

neglected this precaution.[491]

If the commonly received theory of the cause of earthquakes is

true--that, namely, which ascribes them to the elastic force of gases

accumulated or generated in subterranean reservoirs--it is evident that

open channels of communication between such reservoirs and the

atmosphere might serve as a harmless discharge of gases that would

otherwise acquire destructive energy. The doubt is whether artificial

excavations can be carried deep enough to reach the laboratory where the

elastic fluids are distilled. There are, in many places, small natural

crevices through which such fluids escape, and the source of them

sometimes lies at so moderate a depth that they pervade the superficial

soil and, as it were, transpire from it, over a considerable area. When

the borer of an ordinary artesian well strikes into a cavity in the

earth, imprisoned air often rushes out with great violence, and this has

been still more frequently observed in sinking mineral-oil wells. In

this latter case, the discharge of a vehement current of inflammable

fluid sometimes continues for hours and even longer periods. These facts

seem to render it not wholly improbable that the popular belief of the

efficacy of deep wells in mitigating the violence of earthquakes is well

founded.

In general, light, wooden buildings are less injured by earthquakes than

more solid structures of stone or brick, and it is commonly supposed

that the power put forth by the earth wave is too great to be resisted

by any amount of weight or solidity of mass that man can pile up upon

the surface. But the fact that in countries subject to earthquakes many

very large and strongly constructed palaces, temples, and other

monuments have stood for centuries, comparatively uninjured, suggests a

doubt whether this opinion is sound. The earthquake of the first of

November, 1755, which was felt over a twelfth part of the earth's

surface, was probably the most violent of which we have any clear and

distinct account, and it seems to have exerted its most destructive

force at Lisbon. It has often been noticed as a remarkable fact, that

the mint, a building of great solidity, was almost wholly unaffected by

the shock which shattered every house and church in the city, and its

escape from the common ruin can hardly be accounted for except upon the

supposition that its weight, compactness, and strength of material

enabled it to resist an agitation of the earth which overthrew all

weaker structures. On the other hand, a stone pier in the harbor of

Lisbon, on which thousands of people had taken refuge, sank with its

foundations to a great depth during the same earthquake; and it is plain

that where subterranean cavities exist, at moderate depths, the erection

of heavy masses upon them would tend to promote the breaking down of the

strata which roof them over.

No physicist, I believe, has supposed that man can avert the eruption of

a volcano or diminish the quantity of melted rock which it pours out of

the bowels of the earth; but it is not always impossible to divert the

course of even a large current of lava. "The smaller streams of lava

near Catania," says Ferrara, in describing the great eruption of 1669,

"were turned from their course by building dry walls of stone as a

barrier against them. * * * It was proposed to divert the main current

from Catania, and fifty men, protected by hides, were sent with hooks

and iron bars to break the flank of the stream near Belpasso.[492] When

the opening was made, fluid lava poured forth and flowed rapidly toward

Paterno; but the inhabitants of that place, not caring to sacrifice

their own town to save Catania, rushed out in arms and put a stop to the

operation."[493] In the eruption of Vesuvius in 1794, the viceroy saved

from impending destruction the town of Portici, and the valuable

collection of antiquities then deposited there but since removed to

Naples, by employing several thousand men to dig a ditch above the town,

by which the lava current was carried off in another direction.[494]

_Effects of Mining._

The excavations made by man, for mining and other purposes, may

sometimes occasion disturbance of the surface by the subsidence of the

strata above them, as in the case of the mine of Fahlun, but such

accidents must always be too inconsiderable in extent to deserve notice

in a geographical point of view. Such excavations, however, may

interfere materially with the course of subterranean waters, and it has

even been conjectured that the removal of large bodies of metallic ore

from their original deposits might, at least locally, affect the

magnetic and electrical condition of the earth's crust to a sensible

degree.

Accidental fires in mines of coal or lignite sometimes lead to

consequences not only destructive to large quantities of valuable

material, but may, directly or indirectly, produce results important in

geography. The coal occasionally takes fire from the miners' lights or

other fires used by them, and, if long exposed to air in deserted

galleries, may be spontaneously kindled. Under favorable circumstances,

a stratum of coal will burn till it is exhausted, and a cavity may be

burnt out in a few months which human labor could not excavate in many

years. Wittwer informs us that a coal mine at St. Etienne in Dauphiny

has been burning ever since the fourteenth century, and that a mine near

Duttweiler, another near Epterode, and a third at Zwickau, have been on

fire for two hundred years. Such conflagrations not only produce

cavities in the earth, but communicate a perceptible degree of heat to

the surface, and the author just quoted cites cases where this heat has

been advantageously employed in forcing vegetation.[495]

_Espy's Theories._

Espy's well known suggestion of the possibility of causing rain

artificially, by kindling great fires, is not likely to be turned to

practical account, but the speculations of this able meteorologist are

not, for that reason, to be rejected as worthless. His labors exhibit

great industry in the collection of facts, much ingenuity in dealing

with them, remarkable insight into the laws of nature, and a ready

perception of analogies and relations not obvious to minds less

philosophically constituted. They have unquestionably contributed very

essentially to the advancement of meteorological science. The

possibility that the distribution and action of electricity may be

considerably modified by long lines of iron railways and telegraph

wires, is a kindred thought, and in fact rests much on the same

foundation as the belief in the utility of lightning rods, but such

influence is too obscure and too small to have been yet detected.

_River Sediment._

The manifestation of the internal heat of the earth at any given point

is conditioned by the thickness of the crust at such point. The deposits

of rivers tend to augment that thickness at their estuaries. The

sediment of slowly flowing rivers emptying into shallow seas is spread

over so great a surface that we can hardly imagine the foot or two of

slime they let fall over a wide area in a century to form an element

among even the infinitesimal quantities which compose the terms of the

equations of nature. But some swift rivers, rolling mountains of fine

earth, discharge themselves into deeply scooped gulfs or bays, and in

such cases the deposit amounts, in the course of a few years, to a mass

the transfer of which from the surface of a large basin, and its

accumulation at a single point, may be supposed to produce other

effects than those measurable by the sounding line. Now, almost all the

operations of rural life, as I have abundantly shown, increase the

liability of the soil to erosion by water. Hence, the clearing of the

valley of the Ganges by man must have much augmented the quantity of

earth transported by that river to the sea, and of course have

strengthened the effects, whatever they may be, of thickening the crust

of the earth in the Bay of Bengal. In such cases, then, human action

must rank among geological influences.

_Nothing Small in Nature._

It is a legal maxim that "the law concerneth not itself with trifles,"

_de minimus non curat lex_; but in the vocabulary of nature, little and

great are terms of comparison only; she knows no trifles, and her laws

are as inflexible in dealing with an atom as with a continent or a

planet.[496] The human operations mentioned in the last few paragraphs,

therefore, do act in the ways ascribed to them, though our limited

faculties are at present, perhaps forever, incapable of weighing their

immediate, still more their ultimate consequences. But our inability to

assign definite values to these causes of the disturbance of natural

arrangements is not a reason for ignoring the existence of such causes

in any general view of the relations between man and nature, and we are

never justified in assuming a force to be insignificant because its

measure is unknown, or even because no physical effect can now be traced

to it as its origin. The collection of phenomena must precede the

analysis of them, and every new fact, illustrative of the action and

reaction between humanity and the material world around it, is another

step toward the determination of the great question, whether man is of

nature or above her.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In the Middle Ages, feudalism, and a nominal Christianity whose

corruptions had converted the most beneficent of religions into the most

baneful of superstitions, perpetuated every abuse of Roman tyranny, and

added new oppressions and new methods of extortion to those invented by

older despotisms. The burdens in question fell most heavily on the

provinces that had been longest colonized by the Latin race, and these

are the portions of Europe which have suffered the greatest physical

degradation. "Feudalism," says Blanqui, "was a concentration of

scourges. The peasant, stripped of the inheritance of his fathers,

became the property of inflexible, ignorant, indolent masters; he was

obliged to travel fifty leagues with their carts whenever they required

it; he labored for them three days in the week, and surrendered to them

half the product of his earnings during the other three; without their

consent he could not change his residence, or marry. And why, indeed,

should he wish to marry, when he could scarcely save enough to maintain

himself? The Abbot Alcuin had twenty thousand slaves, called _serfs_,

who were forever attached to the soil. This is the great cause of the

rapid depopulation observed in the Middle Ages, and of the prodigious

multitude of monasteries which sprang up on every side. It was doubtless

a relief to such miserable men to find in the cloisters a retreat from

oppression; but the human race never suffered a more cruel outrage,

industry never received a wound better calculated to plunge the world

again into the darkness of the rudest antiquity. It suffices to say that

the prediction of the approaching end of the world, industriously spread

by the rapacious monks at this time, was received without

terror."--_Resume de l'Histoire du Commerce_, p. 156.

The abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, which, in the time of Charlemagne,

had possessed a million of acres, was, down to the Revolution,

still so wealthy, that the personal income of the abbot was 300,000

livres. The abbey of Saint-Denis was nearly as rich as that of

Saint-Germain-des-Pres.--LAVERGNE, _Economie Rurale de la France_,

p. 104.

Paul Louis Courier quotes from La Bruyere the following striking picture

of the condition of the French peasantry in his time: "One sees certain

dark, livid, naked, sunburnt, wild animals, male and female, scattered

over the country and attached to the soil, which they root and turn over

with indomitable perseverance. They have, as it were, an articulate

voice, and when they rise to their feet, they show a human face. They

are, in fact, men; they creep at night into dens, where they live on

black bread, water, and roots. They spare other men the labor of

ploughing, sowing, and harvesting, and therefore deserve some small

share of the bread they have grown." "These are his own words," adds

Courier; "he is speaking of the fortunate peasants, of those who had

work and bread, and they were then the few."--_Petition a la Chambre des

Deputis pour les Villageois que l'on empeche de danser._

Arthur Young, who travelled in France from 1787 to 1789, gives, in the

twenty-first chapter of his Travels, a frightful account of the burdens

of the rural population even at that late period. Besides the regular

governmental taxes, and a multitude of heavy fines imposed for trifling

offences, he enumerates about thirty seignorial rights, the very origin

and nature of some of which are now unknown, while those of some others,

claimed and enforced by ecclesiastical as well as by temporal lords, are

as repulsive to humanity and morality, as the worst abuses ever

practised by heathen despotism. Most of these, indeed, had been commuted

for money payments, and were levied on the peasantry as pecuniary

imposts for the benefit of prelates and lay lords, who, by virtue of

their nobility, were exempt from taxation. Who can wonder at the

hostility of the French plebeian classes toward the aristocracy in the

days of the Revolution?

[2] The temporary depopulation of an exhausted soil may be, in some

cases, a physical, though, like fallows in agriculture, a dear-bought

advantage. Under favorable circumstances, the withdrawal of man and his

flocks allows the earth to clothe itself again with forests, and in a

few generations to recover its ancient productiveness. In the Middle

Ages, worn-out fields were depopulated, in many parts of the Continent,

by civil and ecclesiastical tyrannies, which insisted on the surrender

of the half of a loaf already too small to sustain its producer. Thus

abandoned, these lands often relapsed into the forest state, and, some

centuries later, were again brought under cultivation with renovated

fertility.

[3] The subject of climatic change, with and without reference to human

action as a cause, has been much discussed by Moreau de Jonnes, Dureau,

de la Malle, Arago, Humboldt, Fuster, Gasparin, Becquerel, and many

other writers in Europe, and by Noah Webster, Forry, Drake, and others

in America. Fraas has endeavored to show, by the history of vegetation

in Greece, not merely that clearing and cultivation have affected

climate, but that change of climate has essentially modified the

character of vegetable life. See his _Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der

Zeit_.

[4]

Gods Almagt wenkte van den troon,

En schiep elk volk een land ter woon:

Hier vestte Zij een grondgebied,

Dat Zij ons zelven scheppen liet.

[5] The udometric measurements of Belgrand, reported in the _Annales

Forestieres_ for 1854, and discussed by Valles in chap. vi of his

_Etudes sur les Inondations_, constitute the earliest, and, in some

respects, the most remarkable series known to me, of persevering and

systematic observations bearing directly and exclusively upon the

influence of human action on climate, or, to speak more accurately,

on precipitation and natural drainage. The conclusions of Belgrand,

however, and of Valles, who adopts them, have not been generally

accepted by the scientific world, and they seem to have been, in part

at least, refuted by the arguments of Hericourt and the observations

of Cantegril, Jeandel, and Belland. See chapter iii: _The Woods_.

[6] Verses addressed by G. C. to Sir Walter Raleigh.--HAKLUYT, i, p.

668.

[7]

----I troer, at Synets Sands er lagt i Oeiet,

Mens dette kun er Redskab. Synet stroemmer

Fra Sjaelens Dyb, og Oeiets fine Nerver

Gaae ud fra Hjernens hemmelige Vaerksted.

HENRIK HERTZ, _Kong Rene's Datter_, sc. ii.

In the material eye, you think, sight lodgeth!

The _eye_ is but an organ. _Seeing_ streameth

From the soul's inmost depths. The fine perceptive

Nerve springeth from the brain's mysterious workshop.

[8] Skill in marksmanship, whether with firearms or with other

projectile weapons, depends more upon the training of the eye than is

generally supposed, and I have often found particularly good shots to

possess an almost telescopic vision. In the ordinary use of the rifle,

the barrel serves as a guide to the eye, but there are sportsmen who

fire with the but of the gun at the hip. In this case, as in the use of

the sling, the lasso, and the bolas, in hurling the knife (see BABINET,

_Lectures_, vii, p. 84), in throwing the boomerang, the javelin, or a

stone, and in the employment of the blow pipe and the bow, the movements

of the hand and arm are guided by that mysterious sympathy which exists

between the eye and the unseeing organs of the body.

In shooting the tortoises of the Amazon and its tributaries, the Indians

use an arrow with a long twine and a float attached to it. Ave-Lallemant

(_Die Benutzung der Palmen am Amazonenstrom_, p. 32) thus describes

their mode of aiming: "As the arrow, if aimed directly at the floating

tortoise, would strike it at a small angle, and glance from its flat and

wet shell, the archers have a peculiar method of shooting. They are able

to calculate exactly their own muscular effort, the velocity of the

stream, the distance and size of the tortoise, and they shoot the arrow

directly up into the air, so that it falls almost vertically upon the

shell of the tortoise, and sticks in it." Analogous calculations--if

such physico-mental operations can properly be so called--are made in

the use of other missiles; for no projectile flies in a right line to

its mark. But the exact training of the eye lies at the bottom of all of

them, and marksmanship depends almost wholly upon the power of that

organ, whose directions the blind muscles implicitly follow. It is

perhaps not out of place to observe here that our English word aim comes

from the Latin aestimo, I calculate or estimate. See WEDGWOOD'S

_Dictionary of English Etymology_, and the note to the American edition,

under _Aim_.

Another proof of the control of the limbs by the eye has been observed

in deaf-and-dumb schools, and others where pupils are first taught to

write on large slates or blackboards. The writing is in large

characters, the small letters being an inch or more high. They are

formed with chalk or a slate pencil firmly grasped in the fingers, and

by appropriate motions of the wrist, elbow, and shoulder, not of the

finger joints. Nevertheless, when a pen is put into the hand of a pupil

thus taught, his handwriting, though produced by a totally different set

of muscles and muscular movements, is identical in character with that

which he has practised on the blackboard.

It has been much doubted whether the artists of the classic ages

possessed a more perfect sight than those of modern times, or whether,

in executing their minute mosaics and gem engravings, they used

magnifiers. Glasses ground convex have been found at Pompeii, but they

are too rudely fashioned and too imperfectly polished to have been of

any practical use for optical purposes. But though the ancient artists

may have had a microscopic vision, their astronomers cannot have had a

telescopic power of sight; for they did not discover the satellites of

Jupiter, which are often seen with the naked eye at Oormeeah, in Persia,

and sometimes, as I can testify by personal observation, at Cairo.

For a very remarkable account of the restoration of vision impaired from

age, by judicious training, see _Lessons in Life_, by TIMOTHY TITCOMB,

lesson xi.

[9] _Antiquity of Man_, p. 377.

[10] "One of them [the Indians] seated himself near me, and made from a

fragment of quartz, with a simple piece of round bone, one end of which

was hemispherical, with a small crease in it (as if worn by a thread)

the sixteenth of an inch deep, an arrow head which was very sharp and

piercing, and such as they use on all their arrows. The skill and

rapidity with which it was made, without a blow, but by simply breaking

the sharp edges with the creased bone by the strength of his hands--for

the crease merely served to prevent the instrument from slipping,

affording no leverage--was remarkable."--_Reports of Explorations and

Surveys for Pacific Railroad_, vol. ii, 1855, _Lieut._ BECKWITH'S

_Report_, p. 43.

It has been said that stone weapons are not found in Sicily, except in

certain caves half filled with the skeletons of extinct animals. If they

have not been found in that island in more easily accessible localities,

I suspect it is because eyes familiar with such objects have not sought

for them. In January, 1854, I picked up an arrow head of quartz in a

little ravine or furrow just washed out by a heavy rain, in a field near

the Simeto. It is rudely fashioned, but its artificial character and its

special purpose are quite unequivocal.

[11] Probably no cultivated vegetable affords so good an opportunity of

studying the laws of acclimation of plants as maize or Indian corn.

Maize is grown from the tropics to at least lat. 47 deg. in Northeastern

America, and farther north in Europe. Every two or three degrees of

latitude brings you to a new variety, with new climatic adaptations, and

the capacity of the plant to accommodate itself to new conditions of

temperature and season seems almost unlimited. We may easily suppose a

variety of this grain, which had become acclimated in still higher

latitudes, to have been lost, and in such case the failure to raise a

crop from seed brought from some distance to the south would not prove

that the climate had become colder.

Many persons now living remember that, when the common tomato was first

introduced into Northern New England, it often failed to ripen; but, in

the course of a very few years, it completely adapted itself to the

climate, and now not only matures both its fruit and its seeds with as

much certainty as any cultivated vegetable, but regularly propagates

itself by self-sown seed. Meteorological observations, however, do not

show any amelioration of the summer climate in those States within that

period. See _Appendix_, No. 1.

Maize and the tomato, if not new to human use, have not been long known

to civilization, and were, very probably, reclaimed and domesticated at

a much more recent period than the plants which form the great staples

of agricultural husbandry in Europe and Asia. Is the great power of

accomodation to climate possessed by them due to this circumstance?

There is some reason to suppose that the character of maize has been

sensibly changed by cultivation in South America; for, according to

Poeppig, the ears of this grain found in old Peruvian tombs belong to

varieties not now known in Peru.--_Travels in Peru_, chap. vii.

[12] The cultivation of madder is said to have been introduced into

Europe by an Oriental in the year 1765, and it was first planted in the

neighborhood of Avignon. Of course, it has been grown in that district

for less than a century; but upon soils where it has been a frequent

crop, it is already losing much of its coloring properties.--LAVERGNE,

_Economie Rurale de la France_, pp. 259-291.

I believe there is no doubt that the cultivation of madder in the

vicinity of Avignon is of recent introduction; but it appears from

Fuller and other evidence, that this plant was grown in Europe before

the middle of the seventeenth century. The madder brought to France from

Persia may be of a different species, or, at least, variety. "Some two

years since," says Fuller, "madder was sown by Sir Nicholas Crispe at

Debtford, and I hope will have good success; first because it groweth in

Zeland in the same (if not a more _northern_) _latitude_. Secondly,

because _wild madder_ grows here in abundance; and why may not _tame

madder_ if _cicurated_ by art. Lastly, because as good as any grew some

thirty years since at Barn-Elms, in Surrey, though it quit not cost

through some error in the first planter thereof, which now we hope will

be rectified."--FULLER, _Worthies of England_, ii, pp. 57, 58.

Perhaps the recent diseases of the olive, the vine, and the

silkworm--the prevailing malady of which insect is supposed by some to

be the effect of an incipient decay of the mulberry tree--may be, in

part, due to changes produced in the character of the soil by exhaustion

through long cultivation.

[13] In many parts of New England there are tracts, miles in extent, and

presenting all varieties of surface and exposure, which were partially

cleared sixty or seventy years ago, and where little or no change in the

proportion of cultivated ground, pasturage, and woodland has taken place

since. In some cases, these tracts compose basins apparently scarcely at

all exposed to any local influence in the way of percolation or

infiltration of water toward or from neighboring valleys. But in such

situations, apart from accidental disturbances, the ground is growing

drier and drier, from year to year, springs are still disappearing, and

rivulets still diminishing in their summer supply of water. A probable

explanation of this is to be found in the rapid drainage of the surface

of cleared ground, which prevents the subterranean natural reservoirs,

whether cavities or merely strata of bibulous earth, from filling up.

How long this process is to last before an equilibrium is reached, none

can say. It may be, for years; it may be, for centuries.

Livingstone states facts which favor the supposition that a secular

desiccation is still going on in central Africa. When the regions where

the earth is growing drier were cleared of wood, or, indeed, whether

forests ever grew there, we are unable to say, but the change appears to

have been long in progress. There is reason to suspect a similar

revolution in Arabia Petraea. In many of the wadis, and particularly in

the gorges between Wadi Feiran and Wadi Esh Sheikh, there are water-worn

banks showing that, at no very remote period, the winter floods must

have risen fifty feet in channels where the growth of acacias and

tamarisks and the testimony of the Arabs concur to prove that they have

not risen six feet within the memory or tradition of the present

inhabitants. There is little probability that any considerable part of

the Sinaitic peninsula has been wooded since its first occupation by

man, and we must seek the cause of its increasing dryness elsewhere than

in the removal of the forest.

[14] The soil of newly subdued countries is generally in a high degree

favorable to the growth of the fruits of the garden and the orchard, but

usually becomes much less so in a very few years. Plums, of many

varieties, were formerly grown, in great perfection and abundance, in

many parts of New England where at present they can scarcely be reared

at all; and the peach, which, a generation or two ago, succeeded

admirably in the southern portion of the same States, has almost ceased

to be cultivated there. The disappearance of these fruits is partly due

to the ravages of insects, which have in later years attacked them; but

this is evidently by no means the sole, or even the principal cause of

their decay. In these cases, it is not to the exhaustion of the

particular acres on which the fruit trees have grown that we are to

ascribe their degeneracy, but to a general change in the condition of

the soil or the air; for it is equally impossible to rear them

successfully on absolutely new land in the neighborhood of grounds

where, not long since, they bore the finest fruit.

I remember being told, many years ago, by one of the earliest settlers

of the State of Ohio, a very intelligent and observing person, that the

apple trees raised there from seed sown soon after the land was cleared,

bore fruit in less than half the time required to bring to bearing those

reared from seed sown when the ground had been twenty years under

cultivation.

In the peat mosses of Denmark, Scotch firs and other trees not now

growing in the same localities, are found in abundance. Every generation

of trees leaves the soil in a different state from that in which it

found it; every tree that springs up in a group of trees of another

species than its own, grows under different influences of light and

shade and atmosphere from its predecessors. Hence the succession of

crops, which occurs in all natural forests, seems to be due rather to

changes of condition than of climate. See chapter iii, _post_.

[15] The nomenclature of meteorology is vague and sometimes equivocal.

Not long since, it was suspected that the observers reporting to a

scientific institution did not agree in their understanding of the mode

of expressing the direction of the wind prescribed by their

instructions. It was found, upon inquiry, that very many of them used

the names of the compass-points to indicate the quarter _from_ which the

wind blew, while others employed them to signify the quarter _toward_

which the atmospheric currents were moving. In some instances, the

observers were no longer within the reach of inquiry, and of course

their tables of the wind were of no value.

"Winds," says Mrs. Somerville, "are named from the points whence they

blow, currents exactly the reverse. An easterly wind comes from the

east; whereas an easterly current comes from the west, and flows toward

the east."--_Physical Geography_, p. 229.

There is no philological ground for this distinction, and it probably

originated in a confusion of the terminations _-wardly_ and _-erly_,

both of which are modern. The root of the former ending implies the

direction _to_ or _to-ward_ which motion is supposed. It corresponds to,

and is probably allied with, the Latin _versus_. The termination _-erly_

is a corruption or softening of _-ernly_, easterly for easternly, and

many authors of the seventeenth century so write it. In Hakluyt (i, p.

2), _easterly_ is applied to place, "_easterly_ bounds," and means

_eastern_. In a passage in Drayton, "_easterly_ winds" must mean winds

_from_ the east; but the same author, in speaking of nations, uses

_northerly_ for _northern_. Hakewell says: "The sonne cannot goe more

_southernely_ from vs, nor come more _northernely_ towards vs." Holland,

in his translation of Pliny, referring to the moon has: "When shee is

_northerly_," and "shee is gone _southerly_." Richardson, to whom I am

indebted for the above citations, quotes a passage from Dampier where

_westerly_ is applied to the wind, but the context does not determine

the direction. The only example of the termination in _-wardly_ given by

this lexicographer is from Donne, where it means _toward_ the west.

Shakspeare, in _Hamlet_ (v. ii), uses _northerly_ wind for wind _from_

the north. Milton does not employ either of these terminations, nor were

they known to the Anglo-Saxons, who, however, had adjectives of

direction in _-an_ or _-en_, _-ern_ and _-weard_, the last always

meaning the point _toward_ which motion is supposed, the others that

_from_ which it proceeds.

We use an _east_ wind, an _eastern_ wind, and an _easterly_ wind, to

signify the same thing. The two former expressions are old, and constant

in meaning; the last is recent, superfluous, and equivocal. See

_Appendix_, No. 2.

[16] I do not here speak of the vast prairie region of the Mississippi

valley, which cannot properly be said ever to have been a field of

British colonization; but of the original colonies, and their

dependencies in the territory of the present United States, and in

Canada. It is, however, equally true of the Western prairies as of the

Eastern forest land, that they had arrived at a state of equilibrium,

though under very different conditions.

[17] The great fire of Miramichi in 1825, probably the most extensive

and terrific conflagration recorded in authentic history, spread its

ravages over nearly six thousand square miles, chiefly of woodland, and

was of such intensity that it seemed to consume the very soil itself.

But so great are the recuperative powers of nature, that, in twenty-five

years, the ground was thickly covered again with trees of fair

dimensions, except where cultivation and pasturage kept down the forest

growth.

[18] The English nomenclature of this geographical feature does not seem

well settled. We have _bog_, _swamp_, _marsh_, _morass_,_ moor_, _fen_,

_turf moss_, _peat moss_, _quagmire_, all of which, though sometimes

more or less accurately discriminated, are often used interchangeably,

or are perhaps employed, each exclusively, in a particular district. In

Sweden, where, especially in the Lappish provinces, this terr-aqueous

formation is very extensive and important, the names of its different

kinds are more specific in their application. The general designation of

all soils permanently pervaded with water is _Kaerr_. The elder Laestadius

divides the _Kaerr_ into two genera: _Myror_ (sing. _myra_), and _Mossar_

(sing. _mosse_). "The former," he observes, "are grass-grown, and

overflowed with water through almost the whole summer; the latter are

covered with mosses and always moist, but very seldom overflowed." He

enumerates the following species of _Myra_, the character of which will

perhaps be sufficiently understood by the Latin terms into which he

translates the vernacular names, for the benefit of strangers not

altogether familiar with the language and the subject: 1. _Hoemyror_,

paludes graminosae. 2. _Dy_, paludes profundae. 3. _Flarkmyror_, or proper

_kaerr_, paludes limosae. 4. _Fjaellmyror_, paludes uliginosae. 5.

_Tufmyror_, paludes caespitosae. 6. _Rismyror_, paludes virgatae. 7.

_Starraengar_, prata irrigata, with their subdivisions, dry _starraengar_

or _risaengar_, wet _starraengar_ and _fraekengropar_. 8. _Poelar_, laeunae.

9. _Goelar_, fossae inundatae. The _Mossar_, paludes turfosae, which are of

great extent, have but two species: 1. _Torfmossar_, called also

_Mossmyror_ and _Snottermyror_, and, 2. _Bjoernmossar_.

The accumulations of stagnant or stagnating water originating in bogs

are distinguished into _Tr[=a]sk_, stagna, and _Tjernar_ or _Tjaernar_

(sing. _Tjern_ or _Tjaern_), stagnatiles. _Tr[=a]sk_ are pools fed by

bogs, or water emanating from them, and their bottoms are slimy;

_Tjernar_ are small _Traesk_ situated within the limits of _Mossar_.--L.

L. LAESTADIUS, _om Moejligheten af Uppodlingar i Lappmarken_, pp. 23, 24.

[19] Although the quantity of bog land in New England is less than in

many other regions of equal area, yet there is a considerable extent of

this formation in some of the Northeastern States. Dana (_Manual of

Geology_, p. 614) states that the quantity of peat in Massachusetts is

estimated at 120,000,000 cords, or nearly 569,000,000 cubic yards, but

he does not give either the area or the depth of the deposits. In any

event, however, bogs cover but a small percentage of the territory in

any of the Northern States, while it is said that one tenth of the whole

surface of Ireland is composed of bogs, and there are still extensive

tracts of undrained marsh in England.

Bogs, independently of their importance in geology as explaining the

origin of some kinds of mineral coal, have a present value as

repositories of fuel. Peat beds have sometimes a thickness of ten or

twelve yards, or even more. A depth of ten yards would give 48,000 cubic

yards to the acre. The greatest quantity of firewood yielded by the

forests of New England to the acre is 100 cords solid measure, or 474

cubic yards; but this comprises only the trunks and larger branches. If

we add the small branches and twigs, it is possible that 600 cubic yards

might, in some cases, be cut on an acre. This is only one eightieth part

of the quantity of peat sometimes found on the same area. It is true

that a yard of peat and a yard of wood are not the equivalents of each

other, but the fuel on an acre of deep peat is worth much more than that

on an acre of the best woodland. Besides this, wood is perishable, and

the quantity on an acre cannot be increased beyond the amount just

stated; peat is indestructible, and the beds are always growing.

[20] "Aquatic plants have a utility in raising the level of marshy

grounds, which renders them very valuable, and may well be called a

geological function. * * *

"The engineer drains ponds at a great expense by lowering the surface of

the water; nature attains the same end, gratuitously, by raising the

level of the soil without depressing that of the water; but she proceeds

more slowly. There are, in the Landes, marshes where this natural

filling has a thickness of four metres, and some of them, at first lower

than the sea, have been thus raised and drained so as to grow summer

crops, such, for example, as maize."--BOITEL, _Mise en valeur des Terres

pauvres_, p. 227.

The bogs of Denmark--the examination of which by Steenstrup and Vaupell

has presented such curious results with respect to the natural

succession of forest trees--appear to have gone through this gradual

process of drying, and the birch, which grows freely in very wet soils,

has contributed very effectually by its annual deposits to raise the

surface above the water level, and thus to prepare the ground for the

oak.--VAUPELL, _Boegens Indvandring_, pp. 39, 40.

[21] Careful examination of the peat mosses in North Sjaelland--which are

so abundant in fossil wood that, within thirty years, they have yielded

above a million of trees--shows that the trees have generally fallen

from age and not from wind. They are found in depressions on the

declivities of which they grew, and they lie with the top lowest, always

falling toward the bottom of the valley.--VAUPELL, _Boegens Indvandring i

de Danske Skove_, pp. 10, 14.

[22] The locust insect, _Clitus pictus_, which deposits its eggs in the

American locust, _Robinia pseudacacia_, is one of these, and its ravages

have been and still are most destructive to that very valuable tree, so

remarkable for combining rapidity of growth with strength and durability

of wood. This insect, I believe, has not yet appeared in Europe, where,

since the so general employment of the _Robinia_ to clothe and protect

embankments and the scarps of deep cuts on railroads, it would do

incalculable mischief. As a traveller, however, I should find some

compensation for this evil in the destruction of these acacia hedges,

which as completely obstruct the view on hundreds of miles of French and

Italian railways, as the garden walls of the same countries do on the

ordinary roads. See _Appendix_, No. 4.

[23] In the artificial woods of Europe, insects are far more numerous

and destructive to trees than in the primitive forests of America, and

the same remark may be made of the smaller rodents, such as moles, mice,

and squirrels. In the dense native wood, the ground and the air are too

humid, the depth of shade too great for many tribes of these creatures,

while near the natural meadows and other open grounds, where

circumstances are otherwise more favorable for their existence and

multiplication, their numbers are kept down by birds, serpents, foxes,

and smaller predacious quadrupeds. In civilized countries, these natural

enemies of the worm, the beetle and the mole, are persecuted, sometimes

almost exterminated, by man, who also removes from his plantations the

decayed or wind-fallen trees, the shrubs and underwood, which, in a

state of nature, furnished food and shelter to the borer and the rodent,

and often also to the animals that preyed upon them. Hence the insect

and the gnawing quadruped are allowed to increase, from the expulsion of

the police which, in the natural wood, prevent their excessive

multiplication, and they become destructive to the forest because they

are driven to the living tree for nutriment and cover. The forest of

Fontainebleau is almost wholly without birds, and their absence is

ascribed by some writers to the want of water, which, in the thirsty

sands of that wood, does not gather into running brooks; but the want of

undergrowth is perhaps an equally good reason for their scarcity. In a

wood of spontaneous growth, ordered and governed by nature, the squirrel

does not attack trees, or at least the injury he may do is too trifling

to be perceptible, but he is a formidable enemy to the plantation. "The

squirrels bite the cones of the pine and consume the seed which might

serve to restock the wood; they do still more mischief by gnawing off,

near the leading shoot, a strip of bark, and thus often completely

girdling the tree. Trees so injured must be felled, as they would never

acquire a vigorous growth. The squirrel is especially destructive to the

pine in Sologne, where he gnaws the bark of tress twenty or twenty-five

years old." But even here, nature sometimes provides a compensation, by

making the appetite of this quadruped serve to prevent an excessive

production of seed cones, which tends to obstruct the due growth of the

leading shoot. "In some of the pineries of Brittany which produce cones

so abundantly as to strangle the development of the leading shoot of the

maritime pine, it has been observed that the pines are most vigorous

where the squirrels are most numerous, a result attributed to the

repression of the cones by this rodent."--BOITEL, _Mise en valeur des

Terres pauvres_, p. 50. See _Appendix_, No. 5.

[24] The terrible destructiveness of man is remarkably exemplified in

the chase of large mammalia and birds for single products, attended with

the entire waste of enormous quantities of flesh, and of other parts of

the animal, which are capable of valuable uses. The wild cattle of South

America are slaughtered by millions for their hides and horns; the

buffalo of North America for his skin or his tongue; the elephant, the

walrus, and the narwhal for their tusks; the cetacea, and some other

marine animals, for their oil and whalebone; the ostrich and other large

birds, for their plumage. Within a few years, sheep have been killed in

New England by whole flocks, for their pelts and suet alone, the flesh

being thrown away; and it is even said that the bodies of the same

quadrupeds have been used in Australia as fuel for limekilns. What a

vast amount of human nutriment, of bone, and of other animal products

valuable in the arts, is thus recklessly squandered! In nearly all these

cases, the part which constitutes the motive for this wholesale

destruction, and is alone saved, is essentially of insignificant value

as compared with what is thrown away. The horns and hide of an ox are

not economically worth a tenth part as much as the entire carcass.

One of the greatest benefits to be expected from the improvements of

civilization is, that increased facilities of communication will render

it possible to transport to places of consumption much valuable material

that is now wasted because the price at the nearest market will not pay

freight. The cattle slaughtered in South America for their hides would

feed millions of the starving population of the Old World, if their

flesh could be economically preserved and transported across the ocean.

We are beginning to learn a better economy in dealing with the inorganic

world. The utilization--or, as the Germans more happily call it, the

Verwerthung, the _beworthing_--of waste from metallurgical, chemical,

and manufacturing establishments, is among the most important results of

the application of science to industrial purposes. The incidental

products from the laboratories of manufacturing chemists often become

more valuable than those for the preparation of which they were erected.

The slags from silver refineries, and even from smelting houses of the

coarser metals, have not unfrequently yielded to a second operator a

better return than the first had derived from dealing with the natural

ore; and the saving of lead carried off in the smoke of furnaces has, of

itself, given a large profit on the capital invested in the works. A few

years ago, an officer of an American mint was charged with embezzling

gold committed to him for coinage. He insisted, in his defence, that

much of the metal was volatilized and lost in refining and melting, and

upon scraping the chimneys of the melting furnaces and the roofs of the

adjacent houses, gold enough was found in the soot to account for no

small part of the deficiency.

[25] It is an interesting and not hitherto sufficiently noticed fact,

that the domestication of the organic world, so far as it has yet been

achieved, belongs, not indeed to the savage state, but to the earliest

dawn of civilization, the conquest of inorganic nature almost as

exclusively to the most advanced stages of artificial culture. It is

familiarly known to all who have occupied themselves with the psychology

and habits of the ruder races, and of persons with imperfectly developed

intellects in civilized life, that although these humble tribes and

individuals sacrifice, without scruple, the lives of the lower animals

to the gratification of their appetites and the supply of their other

physical wants, yet they nevertheless seem to cherish with brutes, and

even with vegetable life, sympathies which are much more feebly felt by

civilized men. The popular traditions of the simpler peoples recognize a

certain community of nature between man, brute animals, and even plants;

and this serves to explain why the apologue or fable, which ascribes the

power of speech and the faculty of reason to birds, quadrupeds, insects,

flowers, and trees, is one of the earliest forms of literary

composition.

In almost every wild tribe, some particular quadruped or bird, though

persecuted as a destroyer of more domestic beasts, or hunted for food,

is regarded with peculiar respect, one might almost say, affection. Some

of the North American aboriginal nations celebrate a propitiatory feast

to the manes of the intended victim before they commence a bear hunt;

and the Norwegian peasantry have not only retained an old proverb which

ascribes to the same animal "_ti M[oe]nds Styrke og tolv M[oe]nds Vid_,"

ten men's strength and twelve men's cunning, but they still pay to him

something of the reverence with which ancient superstition invested him.

The student of Icelandic literature will find in the saga of _Finnbogi

hinn rami_ a curious illustration of this feeling, in an account of a

dialogue between a Norwegian bear and an Icelandic champion--dumb show

on the part of Bruin, and chivalric words on that of Finnbogi--followed

by a duel, in which the latter, who had thrown away his arms and armor

in order that the combatants might meet on equal terms, was victorious.

Drummond Hay's very interesting work on Morocco contains many amusing

notices of a similar feeling entertained by the Moors toward the

redoubtable enemy of their flocks--the lion.

This sympathy helps us to understand how it is that most if not all the

domestic animals--if indeed they ever existed in a wild state--were

appropriated, reclaimed and trained before men had been gathered into

organized and fixed communities, that almost every known esculent plant

had acquired substantially its present artificial character, and that

the properties of nearly all vegetable drugs and poisons were known at

the remotest period to which historical records reach. Did nature bestow

upon primitive man some instinct akin to that by which she teaches the

brute to select the nutritious and to reject the noxious vegetables

indiscriminately mixed in forest and pasture?

This instinct, it must be admitted, is far from infallible, and, as has

been hundreds of times remarked by naturalists, it is in many cases not

an original faculty but an acquired and transmitted habit. It is a fact

familiar to persons engaged in sheep husbandry in New England--and I

have seen it confirmed by personal observation--that sheep bred where

the common laurel, as it is called, _Kalmia angustifolia_, abounds,

almost always avoid browsing upon the leaves of that plant, while those

brought from districts where laurel is unknown, and turned into pastures

where it grows, very often feed upon it and are poisoned by it. A

curious acquired and hereditary instinct, of a different character, may

not improperly be noticed here. I refer to that by which horses bred in

provinces where quicksands are common avoid their dangers or extricate

themselves from them. See BREMONTIER, _Memoire sur les Dunes, Annales

des Ponts et Chaussees_, 1833: _premier semestre_, pp. 155-157.

It is commonly said in New England, and I believe with reason, that the

crows of this generation are wiser than their ancestors. Scarecrows

which were effectual fifty years ago are no longer respected by the

plunderers of the cornfield, and new terrors must from time to time be

invented for its protection. See _Appendix_, No. 6.

Civilization has added little to the number of vegetable or animal

species grown in our fields or bred in our folds, while, on the

contrary, the subjugation of the inorganic forces, and the consequent

extension of man's sway over, not the annual products of the earth only,

but her substance and her springs of action, is almost entirely the work

of highly refined and cultivated ages. The employment of the elasticity

of wood and of horn, as a projectile power in the bow, is nearly

universal among the rudest savages. The application of compressed air to

the same purpose, in the blowpipe, is more restricted, and the use of

the mechanical powers, the inclined plane, the wheel and axle, and even

the wedge and lever, seems almost unknown except to civilized man. I

have myself seen European peasants to whom one of the simplest

applications of this latter power was a revelation.

[26] The difference between the relations of savage life, and of

incipient civilization, to nature, is well seen in that part of the

valley of the Mississippi which was once occupied by the mound builders

and afterward by the far less developed Indian tribes. When the tillers

of the fields, which must have been cultivated to sustain the large

population that once inhabited those regions perished, or were driven

out, the soil fell back to the normal forest state, and the savages who

succeeded the more advanced race interfered very little, if at all, with

the ordinary course of spontaneous nature.

[27] There is a possible--but only a possible--exception in the case of

the American bison. See note on that subject in chap. iii, _post_.

[28] Whatever may be thought of the modification of organic species by

natural selection, there is certainly no evidence that animals have

exerted upon any form of life an influence analogous to that of

domestication upon plants, quadrupeds, and birds reared artificially by

man; and this is as true of unforeseen as of purposely effected

improvements accomplished by voluntary selection of breeding animals.

[29] ----"And it may be remarked that, as the world has passed through

these several stages of strife to produce a Christendom, so by relaxing

in the enterprises it has learnt, does it tend downwards, through

inverted steps, to wildness and the waste again. Let a people give up

their contest with moral evil; disregard the injustice, the ignorance,

the greediness, that may prevail among them, and part more and more with

the Christian element of their civilization; and in declining this

battle with sin, they will inevitably get embroiled with men. Threats of

war and revolution punish their unfaithfulness; and if then, instead of

retracing their steps, they yield again, and are driven before the

storm, the very arts they had created, the structures they had raised,

the usages they had established, are swept away; 'in that very day their

thoughts perish.' The portion they had reclaimed from the young earth's

ruggedness is lost; and failing to stand fast against man, they finally

get embroiled with nature, and are thrust down beneath her ever-living

hand."--MARTINEAU'S _Sermon_, "_The Good Soldier of Jesus Christ_."

[30] The dependence of man upon the aid of spontaneous nature, in his

most arduous material works, is curiously illustrated by the fact that

one of the most serious difficulties to be encountered in executing the

proposed gigantic scheme of draining the Zuiderzee in Holland, is that

of procuring brushwood for the fascines to be employed in the

embankments. See DIGGELEN'S pamphlet, "_Groote Werken in Nederland_."

[31] In heavy storms, the force of the waves as they strike against a

sea wall is from one and a half to two tons to the square foot, and

Stevenson, in one instance at Skerryvore, found this force equal to

three tons per foot.

The seaward front of the breakwater at Cherbourg exposes a surface of

about 2,500,000 square feet. In rough weather the waves beat against

this whole face, though at the depth of twenty-two yards, which is the

height of the breakwater, they exert a very much less violent motive

force than at and near the surface of the sea, because this force

diminishes in geometrical, as the distance below the surface increases

in arithmetical proportion. The shock of the waves is received several

thousand times in the course of twenty-four hours, and hence the sum of

impulse which the breakwater resists in one stormy day amounts to many

thousands of millions of tons. The breakwater is entirely an artificial

construction. If then man could accumulate and control the forces which

he is able effectually to resist, he might be said to be, physically

speaking, omnipotent.

[32] Some well known experiments show that it is quite possible to

accumulate the solar heat by a simple apparatus, and thus to obtain a

temperature which might be economically important even in the climate of

Switzerland. Saussure, by receiving the sun's rays in a nest of boxes

blackened within and covered with glass, raised a thermometer enclosed

in the inner box to the boiling point; and under the more powerful sun

of the cape of Good Hope, Sir John Herschel cooked the materials for a

family dinner by a similar process, using, however, but a single box,

surrounded with dry sand and covered with two glasses. Why should not so

easy a method of economizing fuel be resorted to in Italy, and even in

more northerly climates?

The unfortunate John Davidson records in his journal that he saved fuel

in Morocco by exposing his teakettle to the sun on the roof of his

house, where the water rose to the temperature of one hundred and forty

degrees, and, of course, needed little fire to bring it to boil. But

this was the direct and simple, not the accumulated heat of the sun.

[33] In the successive stages of social progress, the most destructive

periods of human action upon nature are the pastoral condition, and that

of incipient stationary civilization, or, in the newly discovered

countries of modern geography, the colonial, which corresponds to the

era of early civilization in older lands. In more advanced states of

culture, conservative influences make themselves felt; and if highly

civilized communities do not always restore the works of nature, they at

least use a less wasteful expenditure than their predecessors in

consuming them.

[34] The character of geological formation is an element of very great

importance in determining the amount of erosion produced by running

water, and, of course, in measuring the consequences of clearing off the

forests. The soil of the French Alps yields very readily to the force of

currents, and the declivities of the northern Apennines are covered with

earth which becomes itself a fluid when saturated with water. Hence the

erosion of such surfaces is vastly greater than on many other mountains

of equal steepness of inclination. This point is fully considered by the

authors referred to in chap. iii, _post_.

[35] The Travels of Dr. Dwight, president of Yale College, which embody

the results of his personal observations, and of his inquiries among the

early settlers, in his vacation excursions in the Northern States of the

American Union, though presenting few instrumental measurements or

tabulated results, are of value for the powers of observation they

exhibit, and for the sound common sense with which many natural

phenomena, such for instance as the formation of the river meadows,

called "intervales," in New England, are explained. They present a true

and interesting picture of physical conditions, many of which have long

ceased to exist in the theatre of his researches, and of which few other

records are extant.

[36] The general law of temperature is that it decreases as we ascend.

But, in hilly regions, the law is reversed in cold, still weather, the

cold air descending, by reason of its greater gravity, into the valleys.

If there be wind enough, however, to produce a disturbance and

intermixture of higher and lower atmospheric strata, this exception to

the general law does not take place. These facts have long been familiar

to the common people of Switzerland and of New England, but their

importance has not been sufficiently taken into account in the

discussion of meteorological observations. The descent of the cold air

and the rise of the warm affect the relative temperatures of hills and

valleys to a much greater extent than has been usually supposed. A

gentleman well known to me kept a thermometrical record for nearly half

a century, in a New England country town, at an elevation of at least

1,500 feet above the sea. During these years his thermometer never fell

lower than 26 deg. Fahrenheit, while at the shire town of the county,

situated in a basin one thousand feet lower, and ten miles distant, as

well as at other points in similar positions, the mercury froze several

times in the same period.

[37] Railroad surveys must be received with great caution where any

motive exists for _cooking_ them. Capitalists are shy of investments in

roads with steep grades, and of course it is important to make a fair

show of facilities in obtaining funds for new routes. Joint-stock

companies have no souls; their managers, in general, no consciences.

Cases can be cited where engineers and directors of railroads, with long

grades above one hundred feet to the mile, have regularly sworn in their

annual reports, for years in succession, that there were no grades upon

their routes exceeding half that elevation. In fact, every person

conversant with the history of these enterprises knows that in their

public statements falsehood is the rule, truth the exception.

What I am about to remark is not exactly relevant to my subject; but it

is hard to "get the floor" in the world's great debating society, and

when a speaker who has anything to say once finds access to the public

ear, he must make the most of his opportunity, without inquiring too

nicely whether his observations are "in order." I shall harm no honest

man by endeavoring, as I have often done elsewhere, to excite the

attention of thinking and conscientious men to the dangers which

threaten the great moral and even political interests of Christendom,

from the unscrupulousness of the private associations that now control

the monetary affairs, and regulate the transit of persons and property,

in almost every civilized country. More than one American State is

literally governed by unprincipled corporations, which not only defy the

legislative power, but have, too often, corrupted even the

administration of justice. Similar evils have become almost equally rife

in England, and on the Continent; and I believe the decay of commercial

morality, and indeed of the sense of all higher obligations than those

of a pecuniary nature, on both sides of the Atlantic, is to be ascribed

more to the influence of joint-stock banks and manufacturing and railway

companies, to the workings, in short, of what is called the principle of

"associate action," than to any other one cause of demoralization.

The apophthegm, "the world is governed too much," though unhappily too

truly spoken of many countries--and perhaps, in some aspects, true of

all--has done much mischief whenever it has been too unconditionally

accepted as a political axiom. The popular apprehension of being

over-governed, and, I am afraid, more emphatically the fear of being

over-taxed, has had much to do with the general abandonment of certain

governmental duties by the ruling powers of most modern states. It is

theoretically the duty of government to provide all those public

facilities of intercommunication and commerce, which are essential to

the prosperity of civilized commonwealths, but which individual means

are inadequate to furnish, and for the due administration of which

individual guaranties are insufficient. Hence public roads, canals,

railroads, postal communications, the circulating medium of exchange,

whether metallic or representative, armies, navies, being all matters in

which the nation at large has a vastly deeper interest than any private

association can have, ought legitimately to be constructed and provided

only by that which is the visible personification and embodiment of the

nation, namely, its legislative head. No doubt the organization and

management of these institutions by government are liable, as are all

things human, to great abuses. The multiplication of public

placeholders, which they imply, is a serious evil. But the corruption

thus engendered, foul as it is, does not strike so deep as the

rottenness of private corporations; and official rank, position, and

duty have, in practice, proved better securities for fidelity and

pecuniary integrity in the conduct of the interests in question, than

the suretyships of private corporate agents, whose bondsmen so often

fail or abscond before their principal is detected.

Many theoretical statesmen have thought that voluntary associations for

strictly pecuniary and industrial purposes, and for the construction and

control of public works, might furnish, in democratic countries, a

compensation for the small and doubtful advantages, and at the same time

secure an exemption from the great and certain evils, of aristocratic

institutions. The example of the American States shows that private

corporations--whose rule of action is the interest of the association,

not the conscience of the individual--though composed of

ultra-democratic elements, may become most dangerous enemies to rational

liberty, to the moral interests of the commonwealth, to the purity of

legislation and of judicial action, and to the sacredness of private

rights.

[38] It is impossible to say how far the abstraction of water from the

earth by broad-leaved field and garden plants--such as maize, the gourd

family, the cabbage, &c.--is compensated by the condensation of dew,

which sometimes pours from them in a stream, by the exhalation of

aqueous vapor from their leaves, which is directly absorbed by the

ground, and by the shelter they afford the soil from sun and wind, thus

preventing evaporation. American farmers often say that after the leaves

of Indian corn are large enough to "shade the ground," there is little

danger that the plants will suffer from drought; but it is probable that

the comparative security of the fields from this evil is in part due to

the fact that, at this period of growth, the roots penetrate down to a

permanently humid stratum of soil, and draw from it the moisture they

require. Stirring the ground between the rows of maize with a light

harrow or cultivator, in very dry seasons, is often recommended as a

preventive of injury by drought. It would seem, indeed, that loosening

and turning over the surface earth might aggravate the evil by promoting

the evaporation of the little remaining moisture; but the practice is

founded partly on the belief that the hygroscopicity of the soil is

increased by it to such a degree that it gains more by absorption than

it loses by evaporation, and partly on the doctrine that to admit air to

the rootlets, or at least to the earth near them, is to supply directly

elements of vegetable growth.

[39] The vine-wood planks of the ancient great door of the cathedral at

Ravenna, which measured thirteen feet in length by a foot and a quarter

in width, are traditionally said to have been brought from the Black

Sea, by way of Constantinople, about the eleventh or twelfth century. No

vines of such dimensions are now found in any other part of the East,

and, though I have taken some pains on the subject, I never found in

Syria or in Turkey a vine stock exceeding six inches in diameter, bark

excluded.

[40] The Northmen who--as I think it has been indisputably established

by Professor Rafn of Copenhagen--visited the coast of Massachusetts

about the year 1000, found grapes growing there in profusion, and the

vine still flourishes in great variety and abundance in the southeastern

counties of that State. The townships in the vicinity of the Dighton

rock, supposed by many--with whom, however, I am sorry I cannot

agree--to bear a Scandinavian inscription, abound in wild vines, and I

have never seen a region which produced them so freely. I have no doubt

that the cultivation of the grape will become, at no distant day, one of

the most important branches of rural industry in that district.

[41] _Les Etats Unis d'Amerique en 1863_, p. 360. By "improved" land, in

the reports on the census of the United States, is meant "cleared land

used for grazing, grass, or tillage, or which is now fallow, connected

with or belonging to a farm."--_Instructions to Marshals and Assistants,

Census of 1850_, schedule 4, Sec.Sec. 2, 3.

[42] Cotton, though cultivated in Asia and Africa from the remotest

antiquity, and known as a rare and costly product to the Latins and the

Greeks, was not used by them to any considerable extent, nor did it

enter into their commerce as a regular article of importation. The early

voyagers found it in common use in the West Indies and in the provinces

first colonized by the Spaniards; but it was introduced into the

territory of the United States by European settlers, and did not become

of any importance until after the Revolution. Cotton seed was sown in

Virginia as early as 1621, but was not cultivated with a view to profit

for more than a century afterward. Sea-island cotton was first grown on

the coast of Georgia in 1786, the seed having been brought from the

Bahamas, where it had been introduced from Anguilla.--BIGELOW, _Les

Etats Unis en 1863_, p. 370.

[43] The sugar cane was introduced by the Arabs into Sicily and Spain as

early as the ninth century, and though it is now scarcely grown in those

localities, I am not aware of any reason to doubt that its cultivation

might be revived with advantage. From Spain it was carried to the West

Indies, though different varieties have since been introduced into those

islands from other sources. Tea is now cultivated with a certain success

in Brazil, and promises to become an important crop in the Southern

States of the American Union. The lemon is, I think, readily

recognizable, by Pliny's description, as known to the ancients, but it

does not satisfactorily appear that they were acquainted with the

orange.

[44] John Smith mentions, in his _Historie of Virginia_, 1624, pease and

beans as having been cultivated by the natives before the arrival of the

whites, and there is no doubt, I believe, that the pumpkin and several

other cucurbitaceous plants are of American origin; but most, if not all

the varieties of pease, beans, and other pod fruits now grown in

American gardens, are from European and other foreign seed. See

_Appendix_, No, 8.

[45] There are some usages of polite society which are inherently low in

themselves, and debasing in their influence and tendency, and which no

custom or fashion can make respectable or fit to be followed by

self-respecting persons. It is essentially vulgar to smoke or chew

tobacco, and especially to take snuff; it is unbecoming a gentleman, to

perform the duties of his coachman; it is indelicate in a lady to wear

in the street skirts so long that she cannot walk without grossly

soiling them. Not that all these things are not practised by persons

justly regarded as gentlemen and ladies; but the same individuals would

be, and feel themselves to be, much more emphatically gentlemen and

ladies, if they abstained from them.

[46] The name _portogallo_, so generally applied to the orange in Italy,

seems to favor this claim. The orange, however, was known in Europe

before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, and, therefore, before

the establishment of direct relations between Portugal and the East.

A correspondent of the _Athenaeum_, in describing the newly excavated

villa, which has been named Livia's Villa, near the Porta del Popolo at

Rome, states that: "The walls of one of the rooms are, singularly

enough, decorated with landscape paintings, a grove of palm and _orange_

trees, with fruits and birds on the branches--the colors all as fresh

and lively as if painted yesterday." The writer remarks on the character

of this decoration as something very unusual in Roman architecture; and

if the trees in question are really orange, and not lemon trees, this

circumstance may throw some doubt on the antiquity of the painting. If,

on the other hand, it proves really ancient, it shows that the orange

was known to the Roman painters, if not gardeners. The landscape may

perhaps represent Oriental, not European scenery. The accessories of the

picture would probably determine that question.--_Athenaeum_, No. 1859,

June 13, 1863.

MUeLLER, _Das Buch der Pflanzenwelt_, p. 86, asserts that in 1802 the

ancestor of all the mulberries in France, planted in 1500, was still

standing in a garden in the village of Allan-Montelimart.

[47] The vegetables which, so far as we know their history, seem to have

been longest the objects of human care, can, by painstaking industry, be

made to grow under a great variety of circumstances, and some of

them--the vine for instance--prosper nearly equally well, when planted

and tended, on soils of almost any geological character; but their seeds

vegetate only in artificially prepared ground, they have little

self-sustaining power, and they soon perish when the nursing hand of man

is withdrawn from them. In range of climate, wild plants are much more

limited than domestic, but much less so with regard to the state of the

soil in which they germinate and grow. See _Appendix_, No. 9.

Dr. Dwight remarks that the seeds of American forest trees will not

vegetate when dropped on grassland. This is one of the very few errors

of personal observation to be found in that author's writings. There are

seasons, indeed, when few tree seeds germinate in the meadows and the

pastures, and years favorable to one species are not always propitious

to another; but there is no American forest tree known to me which does

not readily propagate itself by seed in the thickest greensward, if its

germs are not disturbed by man or animals.

[48] Some years ago I made a collection of weeds in the wheatfields of

Upper Egypt, and another in the gardens on the Bosphorus. Nearly all the

plants were identical with those which grow under the same conditions in

New England. I do not remember to have seen in America the scarlet wild

poppy so common in European grainfields. I have heard, however, that it

has lately crossed the Atlantic, and I am not sorry for it. With our

abundant harvests of wheat, we can well afford to pay now and then a

loaf of bread for the cheerful radiance of this brilliant flower.

[49] Josselyn, who wrote about fifty years after the foundation of the

first British colony in New England, says that the settlers at Plymouth

had observed more than twenty English plants springing up spontaneously

near their improvements.

Every country has many plants not now, if ever, made use of by man, and

therefore not designedly propagated by him, but which cluster around his

dwelling, and continue to grow luxuriantly on the ruins of his rural

habitation after he has abandoned it. The site of a cottage, the very

foundation stones of which have been carried off, may often be

recognized, years afterward, by the rank weeds which cover it, though no

others of the same species are found for miles.

"Mediaeval Catholicism," says Vaupell, "brought us the red

horsehoof--whose reddish-brown flower buds shoot up from the ground when

the snow melts, and are followed by the large leaves--_laegekulsukker_

and snake-root, which grow only where there were convents and other

dwellings in the Middle Ages."--_Boegens Indvandring i de Danske Skove_,

pp. 1, 2.

[50] VAUPELL, _Boegens Indvandring i de Danske Skove_, p. 2.

[51] It is, I believe, nearly certain that the Turks inflicted tobacco

upon Hungary, and probable that they in some measure compensated the

injury by introducing maize also, which, as well as tobacco, has been

claimed as Hungarian by patriotic Magyars.

[52] Accidents sometimes limit, as well as promote, the propagation of

foreign vegetables in countries new to them. The Lombardy poplar is a

di[oe]cious tree, and is very easily grown from cuttings. In most of the

countries into which it has been introduced the cuttings have been taken

from the male, and as, consequently, males only have grown from them,

the poplar does not produce seed in those regions. This is a fortunate

circumstance, for otherwise this most worthless and least ornamental of

trees would spread with a rapidity that would make it an annoyance to

the agriculturist. See _Appendix_, No. 10.

[53] Tempests, violent enough to destroy all cultivated plants, often

spare those of spontaneous growth. During the present summer, I have

seen in Northern Italy, vineyards, maize fields, mulberry and fruit

trees completely stripped of their foliage by hail, while the forest

trees scattered through the meadows, and the shrubs and brambles which

sprang up by the wayside, passed through the ordeal with scarcely the

loss of a leaflet.

[54] The boar spear is provided with a short crossbar, to enable the

hunter to keep the infuriated animal at bay after he has transfixed him.

[55] Some botanists think that a species of water lily represented in

many Egyptian tombs has become extinct, and the papyrus, which must have

once been abundant in Egypt, is now found only in a very few localities

near the mouth of the Nile. It grows very well and ripens its seeds in

the waters of the Anapus near Syracuse, and I have seen it in garden

ponds at Messina and in Malta. There is no apparent reason for believing

that it could not be easily cultivated in Egypt, to any extent, if there

were any special motive for encouraging its growth.

[56] Although it is not known that man has extirpated any vegetable, the

mysterious diseases which have, for the last twenty years, so

injuriously affected the potato, the vine, the orange, the olive, and

silk husbandry--whether in this case the malady resides in the mulberry

or in the insect--are ascribed by some to a climatic deterioration

produced by excessive destruction of the woods. As will be seen in the

next chapter, a retardation in the period of spring has been observed in

numerous localities in Southern Europe, as well as in the United States.

This change has been thought to favor the multiplication of the obscure

parasites which cause the injury to the vegetables just mentioned.

Babinet supposes the parasites which attack the grape and the potato to

be animal, not vegetable, and he ascribes their multiplication to

excessive manuring and stimulation of the growth of the plants on which

they live. They are now generally, if not universally, regarded as

vegetable, and if they are so, Babinet's theory would be even more

plausible than on his own supposition.--_Etudes et Lectures_, ii, p.

269.

It is a fact of some interest in agricultural economy, that the oidium,

which is so destructive to the grape, has produced no pecuniary loss to

the proprietors of the vineyards in France. "The price of wine," says

Lavergne, "has quintupled, and as the product of the vintage has not

diminished in the same proportion, the crisis has been, on the whole,

rather advantageous than detrimental to the country."--_Economie Rurale

de la France_, pp. 263, 264.

France produces a considerable surplus of wines for exportation, and the

sales to foreign consumers are the principal source of profit to French

vinegrowers. In Northern Italy, on the contrary, which exports little

wine, there has been no such increase in the price of wine as to

compensate the great diminution in the yield of the vines, and the loss

of this harvest is severely felt. In Sicily, however, which exports much

wine, prices have risen as rapidly as in France. Waltershausen informs

us that in the years 1838-'42, the red wine of Mount Etna sold at the

rate of one kreuzer and a half, or one cent the bottle, and sometimes

even at but two thirds that price, but that at present it commands five

or six times as much.

The grape disease has operated severely on small cultivators whose

vineyards only furnished a supply for domestic use, but Sicily has

received a compensation in the immense increase which it has occasioned

in both the product and the profits of the sulphur mines. Flour of

sulphur is applied to the vine as a remedy against the disease, and the

operation is repeated from two to three or four--and even, it is said,

eight or ten times--in a season. Hence there is a great demand for

sulphur in all the vine-growing countries of Europe, and Waltershausen

estimates the annual consumption of that mineral for this single purpose

at 850,000 _centner_, or more than forty thousand tons. The price of

sulphur has risen in about the same proportion as that of

wine.--WALTERSHAUSEN, _Ueber den Sicilianischen Ackerbau_, pp. 19, 20.

[57] Some recent observations of the learned traveller Wetzstein are

worthy of special notice. "The soil of the Hauran," he remarks,

"produces, in its primitive condition, much wild rye, which is not known

as a cultivated plant in Syria, and much wild barley and oats. These

cereals precisely resemble the corresponding cultivated plants in leaf,

ear, size, and height of straw, but their grains are sensibly flatter

and poorer in flour."--_Reisebericht ueber Hauran und die Trachonen_, p.

40.

[58] This remark is much less applicable to fruit trees than to garden

vegetables and the cerealia. The wild orange of Florida, though once

considered indigenous, is now generally thought by botanists to be

descended from the European orange introduced by the early colonists.

The fig and the olive are found growing wild in every country where

those trees are cultivated. The wild fig differs from the domesticated

in its habits, its season of fructification, and its insect population,

but is, I believe, not specifically distinguishable from the garden fig,

though I do not know that it is reclaimable by cultivation. The wild

olive, which is so abundant in the Tuscan Maremma, produces good fruit

without further care, when thinned out and freed from the shade of other

trees, and is particularly suited for grafting. See SALVAGNOLI, _Memorie

sulle Maremme_, pp. 63-73. See _Appendix_, No. 12.

FRAAS, _Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit_, pp. 35-38, gives, upon the

authority of Link and other botanical writers, a list of the native

habitats of most cereals and of many fruits, or at least of localities

where these plants are said to be now found wild; but the data do not

appear to rest, in general, upon very trustworthy evidence.

Theoretically, there can be little doubt that all our cultivated plants

are modified forms of spontaneous vegetation, but the connection is not

historically shown, nor are we able to say that the originals of some

domesticated vegetables may not be now extinct and unrepresented in the

existing wild flora. See, on this subject, HUMBOLDT, _Ansichten der

Natur_, i, pp. 208, 209. The following are interesting incidents: "A

negro slave of the great Cortez was the first who sowed wheat in New

Spain. He found three grains of it among the rice which had been brought

from Spain as food for the soldiers. In the Franciscan monastery at

Quito, I saw the earthen pot which contained the first wheat sown there

by Friar Jodoco Rixi, of Ghent. It was preserved as a relic."

The Adams of modern botany and zoology have been put to hard shifts in

finding names for the multiplied organisms which the Creator has brought

before them, "to see what they would call them;" and naturalists and

philosophers have shown much moral courage in setting at naught the laws

of philology in the coinage of uncouth words to express scientific

ideas. It is much to be wished that some bold neologist would devise

English technical equivalents for the German _verwildert_, run-wild, and

_veredelt_, improved by cultivation.