44 PROLEGOMENA 



made no mark upon it; and the thin veil of vegetation 

 which overspread the broad-backed heights and the 

 shelving sides of the coombs was unaffected by his in- 

 dustry. The native grasses and weeds, the scattered 

 patches of gorse, contended with one another for the 

 possession of the scanty surface soil; they fought against 

 the droughts of summer, the frosts of winter, and the 

 furious gales which swept, with unbroken force, now 

 from the Atlantic, and now from the North Sea, at all 

 times of the year ; they filled up, as they best might, the 

 gaps made in their ranks by all sorts of underground 

 and overground animal ravagers. One year with an- 

 other, an average population, the floating balance of the 

 unceasing struggle for existence among the indigenous 

 plants, maintained itself. It is as little to be doubted, 

 that an essentially similar state of nature prevailed, in 

 this region, for many thousand years before the coming 

 of Caesar; and there is no assignable reason for denying 

 that it might continue to exist through an equally pro- 

 longed futurity, except for the intervention of man. 



Reckoned by our customary standards of duration, 

 the native vegetation, like the "everlasting hills" which 

 it clothes, seems a type of permanence. The little 

 Amarella Gentians, which abound in some places to- 

 day, are the descendants of those that were trodden 

 underfoot by the prehistoric savages who have left their 

 flint tools about, here and there; and they followed an- 



have hit upon a heading of less pedantic aspect which would have 

 served my purpose; and if it be urged that the new building 

 looks over large for the edifice to which it is added, I can only 

 plead the precedent of the ancient architects, who always made 

 the adytum the smallest part of the temple." Preface, vii-viii. 

 In the discourse on the Struggle for Existence in Human So- 

 ciety he discussed one aspect of the same subject, how the strug- 

 gle for existence, which is a law of nature, injects itself after all 

 into human society and threatens to destroy the social order. 

 See next essay. 



