CHAPTER I 

 INTRODUCTORY 



I. i 

 MAN AND NATURE 



There be many strange things, but the strangest of them all is MAN.., 

 Earth, Mother Earth, is from everlasting to everlasting... but Man 

 fretteth and wearieth her; for he putteth his horse to harness, and 

 his ploughs go to and fro in the furrow, even as the seasons come 

 round. He spreadeth his snares for the silly birds ; he gathereth the 

 fishes of the sea in the meshes of his nets. Man surpassing in wisdom. 

 By craft he over-reacheth the wild beast upon the mountain, and 

 putteth to his yoke the long-maned steed, and the strength of the 

 great bison. 



THOMPSON'S Sales Attici (Sophocles). 



SINCE Man came to his own upon the earth, he has 

 exercised with little restraint the power of his new 

 wisdom over all created things. So widely and deeply has his 

 influence spread during the hundreds of thousands of years 

 of his wanderings, that it is wellnigh impossible to gauge 

 its effects or to distinguish them amidst the workings of 

 Nature as a whole. Change is apparent in the interrelation- 

 ships of the plants and of the animals of a country with 

 the passing of years ; but who can say that here the heavy 

 touch of Man alone has fallen, and that there only are subtle 

 traces of wild Nature, wrought out through cyclic changes, 

 alternations of climate, and through the processes of natural 

 evolution in living things ? The complications due to the 

 action of contemporaneous natural agencies, together with 

 the difficulties of obtaining evidence regarding the earlier 

 periods of Man's existence make the ultimate analysis of 

 Man's influence on Nature no simple task. 



