292 GENERAL VIEWS, &C. 



viduals should be equally serviceable in keeping up the 

 races of thern.. 



If we come to consider vegetation as it regards our- 

 selves, we shall find that this great agent of nature, 

 subjected in a certain degree to the control of man 

 constituted in a state of society, is the main source of 

 his prosperity or of his misery. How many countries 

 have the greedy ambition of princes, and the degrada- 

 tion and ignorance of the people, made barren ? Re- 

 collect what Asia Minor, Judea, Egypt, the provinces 

 at the foot of Mount Atlas have been, and behold what 

 they ar-e at this day. R-ecollect Greece, once the 

 country ofSci ihee and of liberty, now that of ignor- 

 ance and of slavery ; she can be only recognized in 

 her ruins, and her monuments of the dead. Man had 

 denied his labour to the earth, and the earth her treas- 

 ures to man : all vanished with agriculture. The 

 traveller who passes that country of so great renown, 

 finds in the place of the fine forests that crowned its 

 mountains, or the rich harvests reaped by twenty busy 

 nations, or the numerous flocks that enriched its fields, 

 only naked rocks and sterile sands, with here and there 

 a miserable village. He seeks in vain for several 

 rivers recorded in history ; they are gone.* 



* The preceding summary "from Mirbel," has been abstr 

 * d from the Journal of Science, &c. 



