160 DISCirSSION OF THE DESICCATION QUESTION. 



investigators our attention will be given in the present chapter. The views 

 of those who look upon the climatic change in question as in no wise con- 

 nected with any orographic or cosmic cause may properly be first examined, 

 as they can soon be entirely set aside, and removed from the field of our 

 discussion. This class of authors, which, as has already been stated, embraces 

 by far the larger portion of those who have written on the subject of des- 

 iccation, includes all who look u[)on the drying-up of various regions as the 

 work of man, and not of nature. It is true that these writers often have a 

 very vivid idea of the magnitude of the change which is going on, in its 

 effects on the welfare of various peoples ; but they neither connect it with 

 anything in the geological history of the past, nor do they perceive that it 

 is something over which man has no control. On the contrary, they believe 

 tliat man has brought this ruin on himself; and that, if he would only stay 

 his destroying hand, the land, once fertile and crowded with a prosperous pop- 

 idation, but now desert and abandoned, would again blossom as a rose, and 

 again give suppoi't to thriving millions. Of the extent to which this ojain- 

 ion has become a matter of popular belief, and of the way in which it per- 

 vades all classes of the community, having impressed itself most deeply on 

 the minds of scientific observers as well as of popular writers, the follow- 

 ing extracts, compiled from a variety of sources, will serve to convey some 

 idea. These quotations are, to a certain extent, analogous in their bearing 

 Avith those given in the last section of the preceding chapter, but are not 

 repetitions of the same. There, the dominant idea was, to show how the 

 reality of the desiccation had impi'essed itself on the minds of travellers and 

 geographers ; here, the intention is, to show how strongly and positively 

 various writers have expressed themselves to the effect that it is man's hand 

 Avhich has wrought the ruin. 



The first citation may be from the works of Bernard Palissy, the eminent 

 potter, who died in 1589.* He says, in answer to his own question, "'And 

 why thinkest thou that it is so bad a thing thus to cut down the forests ? ' 

 I cannot sufficiently detest such a thing, and do not call it a crime, but a 

 malediction, and a calamity for all France, for when the forests have all been 

 cut down, all the arts will necessarily be brought to an end, and the artisans 

 will have to go and eat grass like Nebuchadnezzar." t 



* III tin; Biistille, where he was awaiting execution lor the crime of being a Calvinist. 



t CEuvres de Palissy. Paris, 1844, pp. 88, 89. This writer's extreme horror of cutting down trees does not, 

 however, seem to have been so mucli based on a fear of resultant desiccation as on that of an absolute dearth of 

 material for use in the arts. 



