2 LANDSCAPE IN HISTORY 



nearness to or distance from the sea, the shape of the 

 coast-line whether rocky or precipitous, or indented 

 with creeks and harbours — all these and other aspects 

 of the scenery of the land have contributed their 

 share to the moulding of national history and char- 

 acter. For illustrations of this external influence we 

 need go no further than the British Isles, and 

 contrast the aspect and history of central England 

 with those of the Scottish Highlands. 1 



Some of these dominant elements in our surroundings 

 remain permanently with little or no appreciable change. 

 The mountains and the plains are now essentially what 

 they were in the infancy of man, though their mantle 

 of vegetation may have been greatly altered. In other 

 cases, geological processes are continually at work, 

 effecting changes which, though individually of small 

 account, become important in the course of centuries 

 by constant repetition. Thus on some parts of our 

 coast-line there has been a great destruction of land, 

 in others the land has gained on the sea. But man 

 himself has become a geological agent, and has in that 

 capacity greatly modified the surface of many of the 

 countries which he has inhabited. The progress of 

 agriculture has led to the draining of mosses, the felling 

 of forests and the transformation of heaths and wastes 

 into arable land. The increase of sheep and cattle has 

 been the means of clothing the hills with pasture, in 

 place of their former rough herbage and copsewood. 

 And man himself becomes involved in the consequences 

 of the changes which he sets in motion. This subject 



1 This illustration of the subject is discussed in my Geological Essays 

 at Home and J broad, p. 253. 



