366 GEIKIE 



civilisation grew, he asserted his claim to be one of the 

 geographical forces of the globe. Not content with gather- 

 ing the fruits and capturing the animals which he found 

 needful for his wants, he gradually entered into a contest 

 with nature to subdue the earth and to possess it. Nowhere 

 has this warfare been fought out so vigorously as on the 

 surface of Europe. On the one hand, wide dark regions of 

 ancient forest have given place to smiling cornfields. Peat 

 and moor have made way for pasture and tillage. On the 

 other hand, by the clearance of woodlands the rainfall has 

 been so diminished that drought and barrenness have spread 

 where verdure and luxuriance once prevailed. Rivers have 

 been straitened and made to keep their channels, the sea 

 has been barred back from its former shores. For many 

 generations the surface of the continent has been covered 

 with roads, villages and towns, bridges, aqueducts and 

 canals, to which this century has added a multitudinous 

 network of railways, with their embankments and tunnels. 

 In short, wherever man has lived, the ground beneath him 

 bears witness to his presence. It is slowly covered with a 

 stratum either wholly formed by him or due in great 

 measure to his operations. The soil under old cities has 

 been increased to a depth of many feet by the rubbish of 

 his buildings; the level of the streets of modern Rome 

 stands high above that of the pavements of the Caesars, and 

 that again above the roadways of the early Republic. Over 

 cultivated fields his potsherds are turned up in abundance 

 by the plough. The loam has risen within the walls of his 

 graveyards as generation after generation has mouldered 

 into dust. 



It must be owned that man, in much of his struggle with 

 the world around him, has fought blindly for his own ulti- 

 mate interests. His contest, successful for the rnoment, 

 has too often led to sure and sad disaster. Stripping forests 

 from hill and mountain, he has gained his immediate object 

 in the possession of their abundant stores of timber ; but he 

 has laid open the slopes to be parched by drought, or swept 

 bare by rain. Countries once rich in beauty, and plenteous 

 in all what was needful for his support, are now burnt and 

 barren, or almost denuded of their soil. Gradually he has 



