OBSERVATION OF NATURE. 11 
The physical revolutions thus wrought by man have not in- 
deed all been destructive to human interests, and the heaviest 
blows he has inflicted upon nature have not been wholly with- 
out their compensations. Soils to which no nutritious vege- 
table was indigenous, countries which once brought forth but 
the fewest products suited for the sustenance and comfort of 
man—while the severity of their ¢limates created and stimu- 
lated the greatest number and the most imperious urgency of 
physical wants—surfaces the most rugged and intractable, and 
least blessed with natural facilities of communication, have 
been brought in modern times to yield and distribute all that 
supplies the material necessities, all that contributes to the sen- 
suous enjoyments and conveniences of civilized life. The 
Scythia, the Thule, the Britain, the Germany, and the Gaul 
which the Roman writers describe in such forbidding terms, 
have been brought almost to rival the native luxuriance and 
easily won plenty of Southern Italy; and, while the fountains 
of oil and wine that refreshed old Greece and Syria and 
Northern Africa have almost ceased to flow, and the soils of 
those fair lands are turned to thirsty and inhospitable deserts, 
the hyperborean regions of Europe have learned to conquer, 
or rather compensate, the rigors of climate, and have attained 
to a material wealth and variety of product that, with all their 
natural advantages, the granaries of the ancient world can 
hardly be said to have enjoyed. 
Observation of Nature. 
In these pages it is my aim to stimulate, not to satisfy, curl- 
osity, and it is no part of my object to save my readers the labor 
of observation or of thought. For labor is life, and 
Death lives where power lives unused.* 
Self is the schoolmaster whose lessons are best worth his wages; 
and since the subject I am considering has not yet become a 
* Verses addressed by G. C. to Sir Walter Raleigh.—HAxkuvyt, i., p. 668, 
