Mr. Marsh shows, with more than prophetic
insight, with the mathematical logic of facts, that, unless
compensations far more general and adequate than have yet been devised
are provided, 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.
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