784 MODIFICATIONS OF ASPECTS OF OKGANIC NATUKE 



products of this plantation form now an important article of 

 commerce ; their sale and the planting of more of the previously 

 barren, shifting, sandy waste, received a great impulse, as did many 

 alien interests, by the interruption to American imports caused by 

 their great Civil War^, and they occupy a large space in some of 

 our various public exhibitions of economic products. Some little 

 uncertainty appears to hang about the question as to the person 

 to whom the chief credit of this work, which has been compared, 

 and not unjustly, with that of the recovery of Holland from the 

 empire of the sea, is really due. The ' Edinburgh ' reviewer assigns 

 it, apparently with good grounds for so doing, to M. Bremontier, 

 and to a period beginning with the year 1789. Professor Koch 2, 



Palmarum,' iii. 182 3-1 850 ; vol. iii. pi. 120, of the ruins of the ancient Agrigentum, 

 with their modern surroundings. It is thus described by Martins himself, p. 249, 

 note : — ' Chamserops humilis, alia depressa, alia elata octodecimpedalis, in agro Agri- 

 gentino, antiquissimis minis celebri, depicta a CI. Frid. Gaertner, architecta. Muros 

 conspicis raagnifici templi quod Jovi Olympio olim consecratum, nunc inopis palmse, 

 opuntise et agaves domicilium factum est. Junonis Lucinae, Concordiae et Herculis 

 templa diruta remotiores tenant coUes.' It would be difficult, except possibly by the 

 introduction of the orange and olive into the picture, to give a more instructive view 

 of a Mediterranean landscape as altered by man's interference. The ruins of what 

 Pindar called the fairest city raised by earthly men, of what Virgil called ' maxima 

 longd moenia,' speak to man's power for destruction ; the agave and the prickly pear 

 tell of his discovery and utilisation of America ; the fan-palm with its spreading, far- 

 reaching roots and suckers stands as it did in the far-off" times when the priscan 

 inhabitants of Sicania fed upon its roots, as Cicero (In Verrem, Act. ii. lib. v. 38, 

 39) suggested they did before Ceres gave them in that very island the gift of Cerealia, 

 and as it did in the much later days when Verres, by malversation and maladministra- 

 tion, reduced Roman sailors on the shores of what was called the granary of Rome, 

 and was but a few days' sail from Rome, once again to pacify hunger by feeding on 

 that characteristic Mediterranean plant. The importance which plants imported from 

 the New World have assumed in the Old, forms a subject by itself; of the two just 

 specified, besides their other applications, we learn from Admiral Smyth's still 

 unsuperseded 'Memoirs of Sicily and its Islands,' 1834, p. 17, that they 'form 

 impenetrable palisades for fortifications, and in the plains they present very serious 

 obstructions to the operations of cavalry.* 



^ Lavergne's ']&conomie Rurale de la France,' ed. iv. p. 296. 



^ Professor Koch, of Berlin, who seems to consider the planting of the vine to be 

 the climax of attainment in the way of utilising a previously desolate region, writes 

 thus of it, after visiting the spot: 'Weniger mochte es bekannt sein, dass unsere 

 beliebten rothen Bordeaux-Weine ebenfalls in diesem Departement der Haiden 

 wachsen, und dass der Boden vor nicht sehr langer Zeit hier erst fiir die Weinfelder 

 urbar gemacht wurde. Die guten Weine wurden friiher auf dem gegeniiberliegenden 

 Ufer der Gironde gewonnen.' p. 294. 



See also Clav^, 'ifetudes sur I'l&conomie Forestibre,' 1862 ; cited by Marsh, I.e., pp. 

 595-606; Reclus, ' Earth,* En g. trans., i. 82; Edmond About, *Le Progrbs,' chap, 

 vii; Lavergne, '^^conomie Rurale de la France,' 1877, p. 297 seq^. 



