STABILITY OF NATURE. 
27 
energy must be tasked to renovate a nature drained, by liis 
improvidence, of fountains which a wise economy would have 
made plenteous and perennial sources of beauty, health, and 
wealth. 
In those yet virgin lands which the progress of modern 
discovery in both hemispheres has brought and is still bring¬ 
ing to the knowledge and control of civilized man, not much 
improvement of great physical conditions is to be looked for. 
The proportion of forest is indeed to be considerably reduced, 
superfluous waters to be drawn off, and routes of internal 
communication to be constructed ; but the primitive geograph¬ 
ical and climatic features of these countries ought to be, as far 
as possible, retained. 
Stability of Nature. 
Nature, left undisturbed, so fashions her territory as to give 
it almost unchanging permanence of form, outline, and pro¬ 
portion, except when shattered by geologic convulsions; and 
in these comparatively rare cases of derangement, she sets 
herself at once to repair the superficial damage, and to restore, 
as nearly as practicable, the former aspect of her dominion. 
In new countries, the natural inclination of the ground, the 
self-formed slopes and levels, are generally such as best secure 
the stability of the soil. They have been graded and lowered 
or elevated by frost and chemical forces and gravitation and 
the flow of water and vegetable deposit and the action of 
the winds, until, by a general compensation of conflicting 
forces, a condition of equilibrium has been reached which, 
without the action of man, would remain, with little fluctua¬ 
tion, for countless ages. 
We need not go far back to reach a period when, in all 
that portion of the North American continent which has been 
occupied by British colonization, the geographical elements 
very nearly balanced and compensated each other. At the 
commencement of the seventeenth century, the soil, with 
insignificant exceptions, was covered with forests; * and 
* I do not here speak of the vast prairie region of the Mississippi val- 
