CHAPTER VI 
PLANTS AND MAN 
THE appearance of man upon the Earth is an event of 
very recent occurrence, not only in terrestrial history, 
but in the history of organic life in the world. In the 
life-story which began somewhere in far pre-Cambrian 
times, the record of the whole of human activities 
occupies but the last paragraph of the last chapter. 
For millions of years—ever since the larger animals 
first abandoned the aquatic haunts of their ancestors 
and took to a terrestrial life—creatures great and 
small, of myriad kinds, including huge reptiles and 
amphibians, and later on a crowd of birds and 
mammals, have fed on land plants, without effecting 
any profound changes in the appearance of the mantle 
of vegetation which covered so much of the Earth’s 
surface. It has been left for the human race, in the 
course of the few thousand years that have elapsed 
since it emerged from an existence comparable to 
that of the beasts and birds, and learned the arts of 
peace and war, to effect such sweeping changes in 
terrestrial vegetation over wide areas, that its 
influence in this respect requires a separate chapter 
for its consideration. 
The changes referred to are largely—though by no 
means wholly—due to the requirements of the art of 
husbandry; and to the history of agriculture we may 
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