HUMAN AND BRUTE ACTION COMPARED. 43 
lions of square miles, in the fairest and most fertile regions of 
the Old World, into the barrenest deserts. 
The ravages committed by man subvert the relations and de- 
stroy the balance which nature had established between her 
organized and her inorganic creations, and she avenges herself 
upon the intruder, by letting loose upon her defaced provinces 
destructive energies hitherto kept in check by organic forces 
destined to be his best auxiliaries, but which he has unwisely 
dispersed and driven from the field of action, When the forest 
is gone, the great reservoir of moisture stored up in its vegetable 
mould is evaporated, and returns only in deluges of rain to wash 
away the parched dust into which that mould has been con- 
verted. The well-wooded and humid hills are turned to ridges 
of dry rock, which encumbers the low grounds and chokes the 
watercourses with its débris, and—except in countries favored 
with an equable distribution of rain through the seasons, and a 
moderate and regular inclination of surface—the whole earth, 
unless rescued by human art from the physical degradation to 
which it tends, becomes an assemblage of bald mountains, of 
barren, turfless hills, and of swampy and malarious plains. 
There are parts of Asia Minor, of Northern Africa, of Greece, 
and even of Alpine Europe, where the operation of causes set in 
action by man has brought the face of the earth to a desolation 
almost as complete as that of the moon; and though, within 
that brief space of time which we call “the historical period,” 
they are known to have been covered with luxuriant woods, ver- 
dant pastures, and fertile meadows, they are now too far deterio- 
rated to be reclaimable by man, nor can they become again fitted 
for human use, except through great geological changes, or other 
mysterious influences or agencies of which we have no present 
knowledge, and over which we have no prospective control. 
The earth is fast becoming an unfit home for its noblest inhab- 
itant, and another era of equal human crime and human im- 
providence, and of like duration with that through which traces 
of that crime and that improvidence extend, would reduce it to 
such a condition of impoverished productiveness, of shattered 
