44 PHYSICAL IMPROVEMENT. 
surface, of climatic excess, as to threaten the depravation, bar- 
barism, and perhaps even extinction of the species.* 
Physical Improvement. 
True, there is a partial reverse to this picture. On narrow 
theatres, new forests have been planted ; inundations of flowing 
streams restrained by heavy walls of masonry and other con- 
structions ; torrents compelled to aid, by depositing the slime 
with which they are charged, in filling up lowlands, and raising 
the level of morasses which their own overflows had created ; 
ground submerged by the encroachments of the ocean, or ex- 
posed to be covered by its tides, has been rescued from its do- 
minion by diking; swamps and even lakes have been drained, 
and their beds brought within the domain of agricultural indus- 
try ; drifting coast dunes have been checked and made produc- 
tive by plantation ; seas and inland waters have been repeopled 
with fish, and even the sands of the Sahara have been fertilized 
by artesian fountains. These achievements are more glorious 
than the proudest triumphs of war, but, thus far, they give but 
faint hope that we shall yet make full atonement for our spend- 
thrift waste of the bounties of nature. 
¥ ‘And it may be remarked that, as the world has passed through 
these several stages of strife to produce a Christendom, so by relaxing in the 
enterprises it has learnt, does it tend downwards, through inverted steps, to 
wildness and the waste again. Leta people give up their contest with moral 
evil; disregard the injustice, the ignorance, the greediness, that may prevail 
among them, and part more and more with the Christian element of their ciy- 
ilization; and in declining this battle with sin, they will inevitably get em- 
broiled with men. Threats of war and revolution punish their unfaithfulness ; 
and if then, instead of retracing their steps, they yield again, and are driven 
before the storm, the very arts they had created, the structures they had 
raised, the usages they had established, are swept away; ‘in that very day 
their thoughts perish.’ The portion they had reclaimed from the young 
earth’s ruggedness is lost; and failing to stand fast against man, they finally 
get embroiled with nature, and are thrust down beneath her ever-living hand.” 
—MARTINEAU’s Sermon, ‘‘ The Good Soldier of Jesus Christ.” 
+ The wonderful success which has attended the measures for subduing 
torrents and preventing inundations employed in Southern France since 1865, 
