THE HABITABLE EARTH ORIGINALLY WOODED. 147 



abodes of dense and civilized populations, was, with few excep- 

 tions, abeadj covered witli a forest growth when it first became 

 the home of man. This we infer from the extensive vegetable 

 remains — trunks, branches, roots, fruits, seeds and leaves of trees 

 — so often found, in conjunction with works of primitive art, in 

 the boggy soil of districts where no forests appear to have existed 

 within the eras through which written annals reach ; from ancient 

 historical records, which prove that large j)roviuces, where the 

 earth has long been wholly bare of trees, were clothed with vast 

 and almost unbroken woods when first made known to Greek 

 and Eoman civihzation ; * and from the state of much of ]N"orth 

 and of South America, as well as of many islands, when they were 

 discovered and colonized by the European race.f 



These evidences are strengthened by observation of the natural 

 economy of our own time ; for, whenever a tract of country, once 

 inhabited and cultivated by man, is abandoned by him and by 

 domestic animals, and surrendered to the undisturbed influences 

 of spontaneous nature, its soil sooner or later clothes itself with 

 herbaceous and arborescent plants, and, at no long interval, with a 

 dense forest growth. Indeed, upon surfaces of a certain stabihty 

 and not absolutely precipitous inchnation, the special conditions 

 required for the spontaneous propagation of trees may all be 

 negatively expressed and reduced to these three : exemption from 

 defect or excess of moisture, from perpetual frost, and from the 

 depredations of man and browsing quadrupeds. Where these 

 requisites are secured, the hardest rock is as certain to be over- 



* The recorded evidence in support of the proposition in the text has been 

 collected by L. F, Alfred Maury, in his Sistoire des grandes Forets de la 

 Oaule et de Vancienne France, and by Becquerel, in his important work, Dea 

 climats et de l' Influence qu'exercent les Sols boiaes et non boises, livre ii., chap, 

 i.iv. to 



We may rank among historical evidences on this point, if not technically 

 among historical records, old geographical names and terminations eytmo- 

 logically indicating forest or grove, which are so common in many parts of 

 the Eastern Continent now entirely stripped of woods — such as, in Southern 

 Europe, Breuil, Broglio, Brolio, Brolo ; in Northern, Brilhl, and the endings 

 -dean, -den, -don, -ham, -holt, -horst, -hurst, -lund, -shaw, -shot, -skog, -skov, 

 -wald, -weald, -wold, -wood. 



f The island of Madeira, whose noble forests were devastated by fire not 

 long after its colonization by European settlers, takes its name from the 

 Portuguese word for wood. 



