Man and Nature; Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action

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MAN AND NATURE;
OR,
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
AS MODIFIED BY HUMAN ACTION.
BY
GEORGE P. MARSH.
"Not all the winds, and
storms, and earthquakes, and seas,
and seasons of the world, have
done so much to revolutionize the
earth as Man, the power 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
an Endless Life.
NEW YORK:

CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO., No. 654 BROADWAY.
1867.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864,
by
CHARLES SCRIBNER,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United
States for the Southern District of New York.
JOHN F. TROW & CO.
PRINTER, STEREOTYPER, AND ELECTROTYPER,
46, 48, & 50 Greene St., New York.
P R E F A C E.
The object of the present volume is: to indicate the
character and, approximately, the extent of the changes
produced by human action in the physical conditions of the
globe we inhabit; to point out the dangers of imprudence
and the necessity of caution in all operations which, on a
large scale, interfere with the spontaneous arrangements
of the organic or the inorganic world; to suggest the
possibility and the importance of the restoration of
disturbed harmonies and the material improvement of waste
and exhausted regions; and, incidentally, to illustrate
the doctrine, that man is, in both kind and degree, a
power of a higher order than any of the other forms of
animated life, which, like him, are nourished at the table
of bounteous nature.

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