329 



impossibility of repairiug the injuries which have been inflicted upon immense 

 tracts of country by the improper action of man, he refers only to the agencies 

 now known to and directed by man. And, indeed, even with the aid of these 

 agencies, however inadequate to the complete restoration of wasted hill-sides 

 and desolated plains to their former fertility and healthiness, we find there is a 

 pai-tial reverse to the iigly picture which I have pi'esented to you. 



We have seen in the case of Holland (for example) immense tracks of 

 country recovered from the sea and great lakes drained of their waters, and 

 the land thus laid bare converted into valuable pastures ; we see rivers com- 

 pelled to aid, by the deposit of the slime and silt with which they are charged, 

 in filling up low-lying tracts and swampy morasses ; we see fertile oases created 

 even amidst the barren sands of Sahara, by means of Ai-tesian fountains ; but 

 all these achievements are on too small a scale to give hope that we shall ever 

 make full atonement for former spendthrift waste, and it becomes our positive 

 duty, imposed upon us as a sacred trust, not merely to abstain from wanton 

 destruction of the natural resources of this country, and from undue inter- 

 ference with those operations wJiich in the past have tended so much to fit it 

 for the abode of mankind, but also, in all cases in which, through recklessness, 

 or carelessness, or accident, anything has been done tending to injure them, 

 that we should endeavour to efliect all the reparation in our power. 



It has well been pointed out, that if " the old world which man has over- 

 thrown, were rebuilded, could human cunning rescue its wastes and desert 

 places from solitude and nomadic occupation, from barrenness, from nakedness, 

 and from insalubrity, and restore the ancient fertility and healthfulness of the 

 Etruscan sea coast, the Campagna and the Pontine Marshes, of Calabria, of Sicily, 

 of the Peloj)ennesus and Insular and Continental Greece, of Asia Minor, of the 

 slopes of Lebanon and Hermon, of Palestine, of the Syi'ian Desert, of 

 Mesopotamia, and the delta of the Euphrates, of the Cyreniaca, of Africa 

 Proper, Numidia, and Maui'itania, the thronging millions of Eui'OjDe might still 

 find room on the Eastern " Continent, and the main current of emigTation be 

 turned towai'ds the rising instead of the setting sun." Whilst, thei^efore, we 

 are devising great political plans for the extended peopling of these Islands, let 

 us not forget how much it is our duty to preserve them from those destructive 

 processes which even civilized man, in ignorance or wantonness, unhesitatingly 

 applies in his attempts to bring new countries under the dominion of his wants. 



[The lecturer then proceeded to point out that where natural arrangements 

 are disturbed by man, they are not usually restored until long after he has 

 retired from the field, and free reign has been allowed to the spontaneous 

 recuperative energies of the natural forces. He then continued as follows] : — 



And now let me turn to the consideration of some of the more important 

 changes which have already been efiected in the physical character and organic life 

 of these Islands. In my former lectures I pointed out how little, if anything, 



2u 



