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fei-tile meadows, they are now too far deteriorated to be reclaimable by man, 

 or to become again fitted for buman \ise, except through great geological 

 changes or other influences or agencies of which we have no present know- 

 ledge, and over which we have no prospective control." The same author without 

 hesitation affirms, and a careful study of the question as it afi^ects many parts 

 of the world, leads to a perfect acceptance of his views, that " the earth is fast 

 becoming an unfit home for its noblest inhabitant, and that another era of equal 

 human crime and human improvidence and of like duration with that throuo-h 

 which traces of that crime and that improvidence extend, would reduce it to 

 such a condition of impoverished productiveness, of shattered surface, and of 

 climatic excess, as to threaten the degradation, barbarism, and, perhaps, even 

 extinction of the species." 



This is strong language, but I may confidently appeal to any of those 

 who have visited the plains of Babylon and Nineveh, and those parts of Judea, 

 once described, and truly described, as flowing with milk and honey, and now 

 converted into a howling desolation, in confirmation of their absolute truth. 

 I may be told that these are evidences of God's wrath against the people who 

 inhabited those countries ; but setting aside all questions of controversy as to 

 whether the Great Author of Nature ever so deals with man as intentionally 

 and mischievously to interfere with the conditions of life, it is clear that it is 

 to man's action, as a primary cause, that we may attribute the misery and 

 desolation to which they are now reduced — and as a proof of this, let me cite 

 an instance in very modern times of the class of mischief to which I have 

 alluded, and one which bears very directly upon the line of action pursued in 

 various parts of these islands. 



[The lecturer here quoted descriptions of the devastations caused by floods 

 in the Alps of Provence and other parts of France, as described by Blanqui, 

 Surell, and others.] 



What a picture of evils have we here ! And yet in this country, with 

 similar results staring us in the face, we .still persist in the course which has 

 led to them. 



One of the authors from whom I have quoted, however, guards himself from 

 any charge of rash and unphilosophical attempts either to set limits to the ultimate 

 power of man over inorganic nature, or to speculate as to what may be 

 accomplished by the discovery of now unknown and unimagined forces, or even 

 by the invention of new arts and new processes. He properly cites the com- 

 paratively modern discovery of the motive powers of elastic vapours, the 

 wonders of telegraphy, the destructive explosiveness of' various compounds 

 (even when as innocent looking as gun cotton), as instances which serve to 

 show that we have by no means reached the limits within which man may 

 bring his own powers to the aid of physical conquest, and, therefore, he calls 

 upon his readers to understand, that when be speaks of the apparent 



