306 THE HISTORY OF 



I close this sketch, if not in the words, yet following the 

 train of thought of one of the noblest veterans of our 

 science, the venerable Elias Fries, of Lund. 



A broad band of waste land follows gradually in the 

 steps of cultivation. If it expands, its centre and its 

 cradle dies, and on the outer borders only do we find green 

 shoots. But it is not impossible, only difficult, for Man, 

 without renouncing the advantage of culture itself, one day 

 to make reparation for the injury which he has inflicted ; 

 he is appointed Lord of Creation. True it is that Thorns 

 and Thistles, ill-favoured and poisonous plants, well named 

 by Botanists rubbish plants, mark the track which Man 

 has proudly traversed through the earth. Before him lay 

 original Nature in her wild but sublime beauty. Behind 

 him he leaves the Desert, a deformed and ruined land ; for 

 childish desire of destruction, or thoughtless squandering 

 of vegetable treasures have destroyed the character of 

 Nature, and, terrified, flies Man himself from the arena of 

 his actions, leaving the impoverished earth to barbarous 

 races or to animals, so long as yet another spot in virgin 

 beauty smiles before him. Here again in selfish pursuit 

 of profit, and, consciously or unconsciously, following the 

 abominable principle of the great moral Vileness which one 

 man has expressed, " apres nous le deluge" he begins 

 anew the work of destruction. Thus did cultivation, 

 driven out, leave the East, and perhaps the Deserts formerly 

 robbed of their coverings ; like the wild hordes of old over 

 beautiful Greece, thus rolls this conquest with fearful 

 rapidity from east to west through America, and the 

 Planter now often leaves the already exhausted land, the 

 eastern climate become infertile through the demolition of 

 the forests, to introduce a similar revolution into the far 

 West. But we see, too, that the nobler races, or truly 



