ovided, the destructive propensities of civilized man will convert
the world into a waste. Some of our readers have paused thoughtfully
over that chapter in "Les Miserables" which deals so grimly with the
sewerage of cities, and details with the faithfulness of an historian
the exhausting demands of those conduits which carry untold millions to
the sea, and waste that aliment of impoverished soils which not all the
science of the age has found it possible to restore; but Mr. Marsh, not
drawing single pictures with so strong lines, spreads a broader canvas,
and compels his reader to equal thoughtfulness. To quote but one
instance is enough. We have in America thus far escaped, and as
singularly as fortunately, the importation of the wheat-midge which has
been the scourge of the grain-fields of Europe: it will, doubtless, some
time be a passenger on our Atlantic ships or steamers; it will commence
its work; and then man has the task of importing its natural
antagonists, of promoting their spread, and so of compensating the evil.
The work which we are noticing abundantly shows, that, if man were not
in the world, the natural compensations which the Divine Being has
introduced would produce perfect harmony in all things; that man, from
his first stroke at a tree, his first slaying of a beast or bird,
introduces an element of disorder which he can compensate only after
civilization has reached a height of which we yet know nothing, and of
which our present civilization gives us but the suggestion.

To those who may not care to master the philosophy of "Man and Nature,"
the book presents great attractions in the fund of new and entertaining
knowledge given in the text, and yet more largely in the foot-notes.
Many have waded through Mr. Buckle's two volumes a second time for the
purpose of gleaning his facts and gathering up in the easiest way the
latest word in science and literature. Mr. Marsh spreads a homelier
table, but one just as varied and hearty. Never in the course of our
miscellaneous reading have we met an equal store of fresh facts. As
hinted above, they are gathered from every source: the experience of the
maple-sugar maker in Vermont is quoted side by side with the testimony
of the European scholar. The reader will be amazed that there are so
many common things in the world of which he has never heard, and that
they have so large and fruitful an influence over the world's progress.

If there are striking faults