clared: "The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and God-head." And we believe for ourselves that the new discoveries which have led to the new doctrine of the correlation and conservation of forces constitute a long stride on the part of science in the direction of revelation.

3. It is manifest, then, what part natural theology sustains in the present attitude of the great conflict. It is to gather from new fields, the fields which it is the work of science to daily open, new proofs and testimonies in behalf of revealed religion. We repeat, revelation does not prove the existence of God or his attributes. It assumes them. It is left to natural theology to prove them, and as Professor Cooke remarks, natural theology furnishes the logical basis on which the whole scheme of revealed religion given us in the Bible rests.

4. There is imperative need that the clergy now and ever keep in the front rank in the progress of knowledge, scientific as well as all other. They can not always be personal investigators. It is not intended that every man should be, in any other department than his own. But the results of original investigation are always at his hand, as in this comely volume. And we have to thank the author that in it he has placed such means in the hands of the ministry, not only for the work of direct proof, but for that of illustrating revealed truth and throwing light upon it in a thousand ways. It is a volume affording material, fact, "the stuff argument is made of," as our venerated Professor in homiletics used to say. And we are mistaken if men in these times, in our own country at least, are not peculiarly ready to hear that preaching which consists of or is based upon plain, solid, convincing argument. And we submit that the pulpit has sustained the loss of power upon the minds of men, which it now exhibits, from the fact that the ministry, in sermon making, have too much left the paths of substantial reasoning and dealing with great facts and most weighty truths with their issues, for mere oratory and effect. Let the times of plain sound reasoning, and appeals made to the conscience and heart through common sense return, and let us see if there is not in our churches and communities at large a revival of the former power of religion.

ARTICLE IV.

MARSH'S MAN AND NATURE.

BY THE REV. I. F. HOLTON, BOSTON, MASS.

Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action. By GEORGE P. MARSH. New York: Charles Scribner. 1864.

Ir is for man to make a paradise or a purgatory of the globe on which he dwells. And this is not merely true within the narrow limits occupied by a single family and subject to the control of an individual proprietor. There is a slower, wider impression made on the face of a kingdom by the occupancy of a nation for successive ages. This impression is wont to be the seal of desolation, a desolation such as nothing but the hand of creative Omnipotence would seem capable of producing.

For illustration of this, go to the original home of the human race, the native home of the horse, the ox and the sheep; of wheat and barley and rice; of the apple, the the pear, the plum, the fig, the melon, the vine and the olive, where the plantain, the greatest of all herbs, and the most fruitful of all God's gifts to man, once reared its tall, juicy column. What remains of that blissful land? Can these vast solitudes of naked rock and dry ravine be the cradle of the human race? Surely, this desert can never have blossomed as the rose, and teemed with a dense, busy and prosperous population! But look again in this desolate waste rise lofty columns, and at their base lie masses of sculptured marble, mingled fragments of architrave and cornice and foundation and pediment. Stupendous ruins of nameless cities bear witness to an ancient fertility unexcelled by the most favored spot on earth. Here, in wealth and luxury and pride dwelt a people forgotten before the birth of history. Their memorial is perished with them, and their land is an astonishment for barrenness. What has wrought the change?

Man alone of all created beings is capable of achieving a desolation like this. No other, living or extinct, could make any abiding impression on the face of nature. Before his advent all nature was in equilibrium. The lichen corroded the

On these fed aniThe proportionate favoring or adverse

solid rock, and drew thence its food. It decayed, and its dust was the soil for the growth of other plants. mals, themselves the food for other animals. numbers of rival species depended on the influences of climate. As food became more abundant the eaters multiplied; with any diminution of supply dependant races decreased. True, the beaver converted the rivulet into a pond, and built there his city; but nature in time filled his pond with sediment, it became a flat marsh; its inhabitants built in a new location, and again trees waved where trees had waved centuries before. The coral-polypes are a seeming exception to this principle; but their operation is so slow and so vast as to deserve a place among geologic agencies tending to the development of the globe.

Thus all nature stands balanced in equipoise till man, her lord, is brought upon the scene. His maker and hers has given him dominion over her. For his occupancy uncounted ages have been preparing the earth, and he comes to subdue it. He finds it, with fewer exceptions than we are apt to suppose, covered with forest. Tall columns lift the vegetation far above the surface of the earth. Vines ascend them, contend for their share of air and light, and often ungratefully destroy the means whereby they climbed. Down in the shade below may live a few shrubs and herbs. But all, the herb, the shrub, the vine, and the tree agree in one respect: they expend almost all their power in prolonging and extending their individual existence. Were the powers of any one of them diverted to the elaboration of some generous fruit or seed or bulb, stored with abundant nutriment, its selfish rivals would overpower it and exterminate it. The forest, then, is no place for the date, the cocoa, the bread-fruit, nor for the cereal grasses; neither can man, nor the animals of his chase subsist in its depths. So that were the primitive condition of man the savage state, as some most falsely imagine, the forest never was his home. Degraded to a savage, he dwells within its skirts where it borders on plains of grass and bodies of water, but never far within:

Such being the case, when man proceeds to subdue his domain, he of necessity begins by lifting up his axe upon the thick

trees.

The space they occupied he fills with the plants he

brought with him from the verge of Eden, having added maize, and the potato and a very few others to his primitive stock. With these he feeds himself and his dependant animals. He wages a war of extermination against every other animal and plant, found within his territory, or near it, even including too often such animals as aid him in the destruction of the enemies of his crops. The quantity or weight of animal life within his domain is infinitely greater than when it was in a natural state. He tolerates but two carnivora, and them only to help him hold in subjection other animals or to destroy them. Man thus transforms the whole face of nature. Will any unsought changes attend upon those he brings about with his industrious toil? And if so, what changes?

Here is a question of incalculable moment, but one which no inquirer seems ever to have set himself to answer so thoroughly as Mr. Marsh in his Man and Nature. Led, apparently, by the extreme importance of this subject to posterity, he has gone back to the general question: What power man has over nature, and what permanent changes, designed, or undesigned, he is capable of impressing on the face of the globe. To this task he has brought a treasure of careful observation in many lands, and of extensive reading in many tongues, neglecting nothing that might even incidentally throw light upon it. His theme embraces not only the clearing of forests, but the fencing out the sea, and confining rivers to their beds by embankments, the fixing of moving sands, cutting canals, and boring artesian wells in the desert.

But though this range of topics gives the work the completeness of a scientific treatise, the central and moving idea of the work is the ruin caused by the destruction of forests. And to Amer

icans this is a subject of peculiar importance. We trust we shall be excused, therefore, if we examine it to the comparative neglect of others.

But let us go back even one step farther than the Vermontese sage has gone, and inquire whether there is any power in damp or wet soil to attract moisture from the clouds. No scientific theory to prove or explain the existence of any such power is like to be satisfactory. Deposition from the clouds would seem to be little affected by the condition of the soil far beneath

them. But yet we more naturally anticipate the fall of rain on ground already moistened with repeated showers. Farmers say that the "heart of the drouth is broken" when the ground has once become really wet. There are seasons when different portions of the same county are quite unequally favored, one being parched continually, while the other receives numerous showers. Rains, too, are said to follow the course of streams ; that is, to moisten the ground adjoining them to the exclusion of regions on either side.

The drops of more readily

Further,

Be that as it may, there is no doubt that the soil of the forest is far more damp than that of the cleared land. Some causes of this are obvious. The action of the sun and wind, the two great drying agencies, are mechanically impeded. rain are broken, and fall with less force, and are drunk in by the decayed leaves than by naked soil. as in warm weather the woods are cooler than the open country, moist air circulating through deposits some of its moisture there. Again, in the woods the ground freezes less, snow lies longer and till after the ground thaws, and the water, instead of running off in torrents, is absorbed on the spot, and contributes to the dampness of the soil.

But

So much for the action of a forest as mere dead matter. it is, in reality, a mass of living organisms. How do vital forces affect the moisture of the soil? This question involves others on which vegetable physiologists are not agreed; nor do our views of them coincide entirely with those of Mr. Marsh. None doubt that the roots of plants absorb water holding mineral matter in solution, and that the leaves extract carbon from the air, and exhale water. Most believe that at some times leaves absorb water from the air, but this is not true to any great extent; for they will not at the same time imbibe and emit it, and in daylight the emission appears to be continuBut that trees transmit water to the ground through their roots (p. 174), is not only unsupported by evidence, but contrary to all probability. It is not known "that there is a current of sap toward the roots," there being unquestionably at the same time a progress of crude sap in the contrary direction, and by the same medium. The leaves combine water from the root and carbon from the air into organic matter, and this is

ous.