FOREST FURNISHES NO FOOD FOR MAN. 643 
the earth, and form any proper geographical image of that 
country. At other seasons, not high walls only, but equally im- 
pervious hedges, and now, unhappily, acacias thickly planted 
along the railway routes, confine the view so completely, that 
the arch of a tunnel, or a night-cap over the traveller’s eyes, is 
scarcely a more effectual obstacle to the gratification of his 
curiosity.* 
The Forest does not furnish Food for Man. 
In a region absolutely covered with trees, human life could 
not long be sustained, for want of animal and vegetable food. 
The depths of the forest seldom furnish either bulb or fruit 
suited to the nourishment of man; and the fowls and beasts on 
which he feeds are scarcely seen except upon the margin of the 
wood, for here only grow the shrubs and grasses, and here only 
are found the seeds and insects, which form the sustenance of 
the non-carnivorous birds and quadrupeds.t 
* Besides this, in a country so diversified in surface as Italy, with the exception 
f the champaign region drained by the Po, every new field of view requires 
either an extraordinary cowp d@ wil in the spectator, or a long study, in order to 
master its relief, its plans, its salient and retreating angles. In summer, ex- 
cept of course in the bare mountains, the universal greenery confounds light 
and shade, distance and foreground; and though the impression upon a trav- 
eller, who journeys for the sake of ‘‘ sensations,” may be strengthened by the 
mysterious annihilation of all standards for the measurement of space, yet 
the superior intelligibility of the winter scenery of Italy is more profitable to 
those who see with a view to analyze. 
+ Clavé, as well as many earlier writers, supposes that primitive man de- 
rived his nutriment from the spontaneous productions of the wood. ‘‘Itis 
to the forests,” says he, ‘‘ that man was first indebted for the means of sub- 
sistence. Exposed alone, without defence, to the rigor of the seasons, as 
well as to the attacks of animals stronger and swifter than himself, he found 
in them his first shelter, drew from them his first weapons. In the first period 
of humanity, they provided for all his wants: they furnished him wood for 
warmth, fruits for food, garments to cover his nakedness, arms for his de- 
fence.” —Iitudes sur 0 Economie Forestiére, p, 13. 
But the history of savage life, as far as it is known to us, presents man in 
that condition as inhabiting only the borders of the forest and the open 
