ANTAGONISM BETWEEN MAN AND NATURE. 183 



evaporation. The water used for irrigation, under such circumstances, as it 

 evaporates leaves behind the saline matter with which it is charged, which 

 thus accumulates so that the soil in time becomes too strongly impregnated 

 with it to admit of successful cultivation. This is only one of the manifesta- 

 tions of increasing desiccation. It is an example of the difficulties which 

 man meets in his struggles against unfavorable physical conditions, and a 

 proof of his inability to overcome them. 



The subject of the exhaustion of the soil, by constant cultivation without 

 restoring to the ground that which has been removed b>^ the growing crops, 

 is one of great importance, but too remotely connected with the topics under 

 discussion in the present volume to make it necessary to examine it in 

 detail. Using up the resources of a country by relentlessly drawing from 

 the soil the available elements with which it is stored has, at all events, 

 nothing to do with desiccation, and can oidy be put in the same category 

 with the destruction of forests, on the ground that both operations indicate 

 unthrift and wastefulness. A country which is not sufficiently supplied with 

 moisture cannot be successfully cultivated ; hence those who consider dry- 

 ness to have been produced by the hand of man will also naturally ascribe 

 the barrenness resulting from desiccation to the same cause. It would be no 

 more reasonable to ascribe the dryness of the lands bordering the Mediter- 

 ranean to cultivation, than it would be to maintain that the climate of 

 Nevada had been deteriorated by the rapid working out of its silver-mines. 

 The trees in a region sufficiently supplied with moisture will, after having 

 been cut down, be soon replaced by others. In a country where desiccation 

 has advanced so far as it has over a large part of Asia Minor, Greece, and 

 Northern Africa, the forest-growth, if removed, is only with great difficulty, 

 or not at all, replaced. In this respect the trees in a dry country are like 

 the ore in a mine, which is there once for all, and, having been worked out, 

 is gone forever. The inability of the ore to reproduce itself and of the 

 forest to grow again are both the results of natural causes ; the difference 

 being that, in the case of the ore, this would remain forever in the ground 

 unchanged in quality, if not touched b}^ tlie miner, while the forest would 

 .surely, if left to itself, decay away and perish, however religiously it might 

 liave been spared by the hand of man. 



Everything in the world's history shows that nations have pi-eferred to 

 change their place rather thnn to attempt to battle ngainst nature. Civiliza- 

 tion has pushed its way from the southeast towards the northwest, on the 



