48 PHYSICAL CONSEEVATION" AIO) EESTOKATIOIT. 



or Ms crimes have made barren or pestilential. Among these 

 circumstances, the most prominent, perhaps, is the necessity of 

 providing new homes for a Em-opean population which is in- 

 creasing more rapidly than its means of subsistence, new physical 

 comforts for classes of the peoj^le that have now become too 

 much enlightened, and have imbibed too much culture, to submit 

 to a longer deprivation of a share m the material enjoyments 

 which the privileged ranks have hitherto monopohzed. 



To supply new hives for the emigrant swarms, there are, first, 

 the vast unoccupied praiiies and forests of America, of Aus trali a 

 and of many other great ocean ic islands, the sparsely inhabited 

 and still unexhausted soils of Southern and even Central Africa, 

 and, finally, the impoverished and half -depopulated shores of the 

 Mediterranean, and the interior of Asia Minor and the farther 

 East. To fm-nish those who remain, after emigration shall have 

 conveniently reduc^^d the too dense population of many Euro 

 pean States, with i,nose means of sensuous and of intellectual 

 well-being which are styled "artificial wants" when demanded 

 by the humble and the poor, but are admitted to be " necessaries " 

 when claimed by the noble and the rich, the soil must be stimu- 

 lated to its highest jjowers of production, and man's utmost in- 

 genuity and energy must be tasked to renovate a nature drained, 

 by his improvidence, of fountains which a wise economy would 

 have made plenteous and perennial sources of beauty, health and 

 wealth. 



In those yet virgin lands which the progress of modern dis- 

 covery in both hemispheres has brought and is still bringing to 

 the knowledge and control of civilized man, not much improve- 

 ment of great physical conditions is to be looked for. The pro- 

 portion of forest is indeed to be considerably reduced, super- 

 fluous waters to be drawn off, and routes of iuternal communi- 

 cation to be constructed ; but the primitive geograpliical and 

 cKmatic features of these countries ought to be, as far as poa^jible, 

 retained. 



In reclaiming and reoccupying lands laid waste by human im- 

 providence or mahce, and abandoned by man or occupied only 

 by a nomade or thinly scattered population, the task of the 

 pioneer settler is of a very different character. He is to become 

 a co-worker with nature in the reconstruction of the damaged 



