George P. Marsh - The Earth as Modified by Human Action

Project Gutenberg's The Earth as Modified by Human Action, by George P. Marsh

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check thecopyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributingthis or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.

This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this ProjectGutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit theheader without written permission.

Please read the "legal small print," and other information about theeBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included isimportant information about your specific rights and restrictions inhow the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make adonation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.

**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**

**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**

*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****

Title: The Earth as Modified by Human Action

Author: George P. Marsh

Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6019][Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule][This file was first posted on October 18, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARTH AS MODIFIED BY HUMAN ACTION ***

Produced by Steve Harris, Charles Franksand the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

"Not all the winds, and storms, and earthquakes, and seas, and seasonsof the world, have done so much to revolutionize the earth as MAN, thepower of an endless life, has done since the day he came forth upon it,and received dominion over it."H. Bushnell, Sermon on the Power of anEndless Life.

1874.

The object of the present volume is: to indicate the character and,approximately, the extent of the changes produced by human action in thephysical conditions of the globe we inhabit; to point out the dangers ofimprudence and the necessity of caution in all operations which, on alarge scale, interfere with the spontaneous arrangements of the organicor the inorganic world; to suggest the possibility and the importance ofthe restoration of disturbed harmonies and the material improvement ofwaste and exhausted regions; and, incidentally, to illustrate thedoctrine that man is, in both kind and degree, a power of a higher orderthan any of the other forms of animated life, which, like him, arenourished at the table of bounteous nature.

In the rudest stages of life, man depends upon spontaneous animal andvegetable growth for food and clothing, and his consumption of suchproducts consequently diminishes the numerical abundance of the specieswhich serve his uses. At more advanced periods, he protects andpropagates certain esculent vegetables and certain fowls and quadrupeds,and, at the same time, wars upon rival organisms which prey upon theseobjects of his care or obstruct the increase of their numbers. Hence theaction of man upon the organic world tends to derange its originalbalances, and while it reduces the numbers of some species, or evenextirpates them altogether, it multiplies other forms of animal andvegetable life.

The extension of agricultural and pastoral industry involves anenlargement of the sphere of man's domain, by encroachment upon theforests which once covered the greater part of the earth's surfaceotherwise adapted to his occupation. The felling of the woods has beenattended with momentous consequences to the drainage of the soil, to theexternal configuration of its surface, and probably, also, to localclimate; and the importance of human life as a transforming power is,perhaps, more clearly demonstrable in the influence man has thus exertedupon superficial geography than in any other result of his materialeffort.

Lands won from the woods must be both drained and irrigated; river-banksand maritime coasts must be secured by means of artificial bulwarksagainst inundation by inland and by ocean floods; and the needs ofcommerce require the improvement of natural and the construction ofartificial channels of navigation. Thus man is compelled to extend overthe unstable waters the empire he had already founded upon the solidland.

The upheaval of the bed of seas and the movements of water and of windexpose vast deposits of sand, which occupy space required for theconvenience of man, and often, by the drifting of their particles,overwhelm the fields of human industry with invasions as disastrous asthe incursions of the ocean. On the other hand, on many coasts,sand-hills both protect the shores from erosion by the waves andcurrents, and shelter valuable grounds from blasting sea-winds. Man,therefore, must sometimes resist, sometimes promote, the formation andgrowth of dunes, and subject the barren and flying sands to the sameobedience to his will to which he has reduced other forms of terrestrialsurface.

Besides these old and comparatively familiar methods of materialimprovement, modern ambition aspires to yet grander achievements in theconquest of physical nature, and projects are meditated which quiteeclipse the boldest enterprises hitherto undertaken for the modificationof geographical surface.

The natural character of the various fields where human industry haseffected revolutions so important, and where the multiplying populationand the impoverished resources of the globe demand new triumphs of mindover matter, suggests a corresponding division of the general subject,and I have conformed the distribution of the several topics to thechronological succession in which man must be supposed to have extendedhis sway over the different provinces of his material kingdom. I have,then, in the introductory chapter, stated, in a comprehensive way, thegeneral effects and the prospective consequences of human action uponthe earth's surface and the life which peoples it. This chapter isfollowed by four others in which I have traced the history of man'sindustry as exerted upon Animal and Vegetable Life, upon the Woods, uponthe Waters, and upon the Sands; and to these I have added a concludingchapter upon Man.

It is perhaps superfluous to add, what indeed sufficiently appears uponevery page of the volume, that I address myself not to professedphysicists, but to the general intelligence of observing and thinkingmen; and that my purpose is rather to make practical suggestions than toindulge in theoretical speculations more properly suited to a differentclass from that for which I write.

December 1, 1868.

In preparing for the press an Italian translation of this work,published at Florence in 1870, I made numerous corrections in thestatement of both facts and opinions; I incorporated into the text andintroduced in notes a large amount of new data and other illustrativematter; I attempted to improve the method by differently arranging manyof the minor subdivisions of the chapters; and I suppressed a fewpassages which teemed to me superfluous. In the present edition, whichis based on the Italian translation, I have made many furthercorrections and changes of arrangement of the original matter; I haverewritten a considerable portion of the work, and have made, in the textand in notes, numerous and important additions, founded partly onobservations of my own, partly on those of other students of PhysicalGeography, and though my general conclusions remain substantially thesame as those I first announced, yet I think I may claim to have givengreater completeness and a more consequent and logical form to the wholeargument

Since the publication of the original edition, Mr. Elisee Reclus, in thesecond volume of his admirable work, La Terre (Paris, 1868), lately madeaccessible to English-reading students, has treated, in a general way,the subject I have undertaken to discuss. He has, however, occupiedhimself with the conservative and restorative, rather than with thedestructive, effects of human industry, and he has drawn an attractiveand encouraging picture of the ameliorating influences of the action ofman, and of the compensations by which he, consciously or unconsciously,makes amends for the deterioration which he has produced in the mediumhe inhabits. The labors of Mr. Reclus, therefore, though aiming at amuch higher and wider scope than I have had in view, are, in thisparticular point, a complement to my own. I earnestly recommend the workof this able writer to the attention of my readers.