428 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1030 



November, 1901, he wrote as follows: 

 "Seeing in Basutoland the effect of about 

 thirty years of cultivation and more or less 

 intense habitation convinced me of the fact 

 that another country with steep slopes 

 and thin depth of soil, like Palestine, has 

 been almost completely denuded by hun- 

 dreds of years of cultivation and intense 

 habits. The Palestine which Joshua con- 

 quered and which the children of Israel in- 

 habited was in all probability covered over 

 great part of its area by sufficient earth 

 to provide food for a population a hundred 

 times as dense as that which, can be sup- 

 ported to-day." The Scotch geologist, 

 Hugh Miller, again attributed the forma- 

 tion of the Scotch mosses to the cutting 

 down of timber by Roman soldiers. 

 ■"What had been an overturned forest be- 

 came in the course of years a deep morass. ' ' 

 In past times there have been voices 

 raised in favor of the forests, but they have 

 been voices crying in the desert which 

 man has made. Here is one. The old 

 chronicler Holinshed, who, lived in the 

 reign of Queen Elizabeth, noted the 

 amount of timber cut down for house 

 building and in order to increase the area 

 for pasturage. "Every small occasion in 

 my time," he writes, "is enough to cut 

 down a great wood"; and in another pas- 

 sage either he himself or one of his collab- 

 orators writes that he would wish to live to 

 see four things reformed in England: 

 "The want of discipline in the Church, 

 the covetous dealing of most of our mer- 

 chants in the preferment of commodities 

 of other countries and hindrance of their 

 own, the holding of fairs and markets upon 

 the Sunday to be abolished and referred 

 to the Wednesdays, and that every man 

 in whatever part of the ehampaine soil en- 

 joyeth forty acres of land and upwards 

 after that rate, either by free deed, copy- 

 hold or fee farm, might plant one acre of 



wood or sow the same with oke mast, 

 hazell, beach and sufficient provision be 

 made that it be cherished and kept." 



Mr. Marsh seems to have thought that 

 the Old World, and especially the coun- 

 tries which formed the old Roman Empire, 

 had been ruined almost past redemption; 

 and for the beneficent action of man on 

 nature he looked across the seas. "Aus- 

 tralia and New Zealand," he writes, "are 

 perhaps the countries from which we have 

 a right to expect the fullest elucidation of 

 these difficult and disputable problems. 

 Here exist greater facilities and stronger 

 motives for the careful study of the topics 

 in question than have ever been found 

 combined in any other theater of European 

 colonization. ' ' 



His book was first written half a century 

 ago. He was a pessimist evidently, and 

 pessimists exaggerate even more than op- 

 timists, for there is nothing more exhila- 

 rating and consoling to ourselves than to 

 predict the worst possible consequences 

 from our neighbor's folly. Further, though 

 it may be true that man became more de- 

 structive as he became more civilized, it is 

 also true that the destruction has been 

 wrought directly rather by the unscien- 

 tific than by the scientific man. If we 

 have not grown less destructive since, at 

 any rate we have shown some signs of 

 penitence, and science has come to our aid 

 in the work of reparation. Governments 

 and associations have turned their atten- 

 tion to protecting woodland and reafforest- 

 ing tracts which have been laid bare. The 

 Touring Club of France, for instance, I am 

 told, has taken up the question of the 

 damage done by destruction of trees by 

 men and sheep in Haute Savoie, and it 

 assists reclamation by guidance and by 

 grants. In England, under the auspices of 

 Birmingham University and under the 

 presidency of Sir Oliver Lodge, the Mid- 



