98 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP, iv 



destroyed them just as a hurricane or a conflagration might 

 have destroyed them, only more gradually, and at the same 

 time more thoroughly. In replanting the same or similar 

 trees as those which inhabited Europe before the Glacial 

 period, we may be said to be only bringing back our own, 

 and again clothing our land with those forest denizens 

 which at no very distant epoch it actually possessed. 



