SPREAD OF DEVASTATION. 109 



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 tract 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 man himself flies terrified from the arena of his actions, 

 leaving the impoverished earth to bai'barous races or animals, so long 

 as yet another spot in virgin beauty smiles before him. Here again, 

 in selfish pursuit of profit, consciously or unconsciously, he begins 

 anew the work of destruction. Thus did cultivation, driven out, 

 leave the East, and the deserts pei'haps previously I'obbed 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 often now leaves the already exhausted 

 land, the eastern climate become infei'tile 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 cultivated men, even now 

 raise their warning voices, put their small hand to the mighty work 

 of restoring to nature her strength and fulness in yet a higher stage 

 than that of wild nature ; one dependent on the law of purpose 

 given by man, arranged according to plans which are copied from 

 the development of manhood itself. All this, indeed^ remains at 

 present but a powerless, and for the whole, an insignificantly small 

 enterprise, but it preserves the faith in the vocation of man and his 

 power to fulfil it. In future times he will and must, when he rules, 

 leads, and protects the whole, free nature from the tyrannous slavery 

 to which he now abases her, and in which he can only keep her by 

 restless giant struggles against the eternally resisting. We see in 

 the gray cloudy distance of the future a realm of peace and beauty 

 on the earth and in nature, but to reach it must man long study in 

 the school of nature, and, before all, free himself from the bonds of 

 that exclusive selfishness by which he is actuated." ' 



In 1847 was published Klima ttiid Plantzen Welt in der Zeit, by 

 C. Fraas. It was published at Landshut. In this work the writer 

 endeavoured to show, by the history of vegetation in Greece, not merely 

 that clearing and cultivation have affected the climate, but that change 

 of climate had essentially modified the character of vegetable life. 



