328 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 



ed to the soil and climate. Nor, indeed, is this all ; 

 for the same mighty influence has changed even the 

 conditions of climate and the natural course of sea- 

 sons by the removal of forests and the draining of 

 marshes. In this way have been effected those 

 final, and, in their way, mighty changes, which this 

 closing chapter of the earth's history calls upon us 

 to notice, although, from their recent production, 

 they rather belong to recent natural history than to 

 geology in the general acceptation of the term. 



In Europe, and, above all, in England, where every 

 corner of land is considered as waste if it is not 

 employed directly by human agents and for human 

 purposes, and where man is in everything paramount, 

 these changes have now so far affected the surface of 

 the land, as to render it difficult to pursue our investi- 

 gations with regard to the true history of unfettered 

 nature. We must go to distant countries and other 

 climes, where nature is still free, to discover the great 

 facts of general progress ; it is there, if at all, that 

 we shall find distinct traces of the progress of that 

 well-adapted system, according to which all things, 

 animate and inanimate, work together in harmony ; 

 and we must travel with the enterprising and the 

 active, over plains and into forests hitherto untrodden 

 by man, or, with the geologist, we must look far back 

 into the ancient history of the earth, if we would 

 know truly and fully what nature is, and how far the 

 laws originally imposed on matter are real and have 

 been perpetual. 



