PAST AND FUTURE OF ANIMAL LIFE 149 



unreflecting Nature. These times are passing, if they 

 , have not yet wholly passed, away. But the lover of 

 Nature may find comfort in the thought that man's 

 power over Nature is limited, and though robbed of 

 much of her wild beauty, she rises partly tamed but 

 unconquered in the end by the less-enduring spirit of 

 man. In Italy, where the influence of civilized man 

 has been most intensely felt for long and continuous 

 periods, almost every feature in the landscape owes 

 its distinctive characters to man, and yet Nature has 

 assimilated and welded them into a harmonious 

 whole. The cypresses, the pines, the dull-grey olives 

 on the brown hillsides, the vines, the oranges gleaming 

 like balls of yellow fire in the black foliage, all these 

 things that help to make Italy what she is were 

 brought hither and planted by man in distant ages ; 

 the native vegetation only holds its own, a stunted 

 remnant, on the mountain tops ; but who can regret 

 the change or say where the work of man begins and 

 that of Nature ends ? 



