How beautiful is cultivated Nature when by the cares of man she is brilliantly and pompously adorned!  He himself is the chief ornament, the most noble production; in multiplying himself he multiplies her most precious gem.  She seems to multiply herself with him, for his art brings to light all that her bosom conceals.  What treasures hitherto ignored!  What new riches!  Flowers, fruits, perfected grains infinitely multiplied; useful species of animals transported, propagated, endlessly increased; harmful species destroyed, confined, banished; gold, and iron more necessary than gold, drawn from the bowels of the earth; torrents confined; rivers directed and restrained; the sea, submissive and comprehended, crossed from one hemisphere to the other; the earth everywhere accessible, everywhere living and fertile; in the valleys, laughing prairies; in the plains, rich pastures or richer harvests; the hills loaded with vines and fruits, their summits crowned by useful trees and young forests; deserts changed to cities inhabited by a great people, who, ceaselessly circulating, scatter themselves from centres to extremities; frequent open roads and communications established everywhere like so many witnesses of the force and union of society; a thousand other monuments of power and glory:  proving that man, master of the world, has transformed it, renewed its whole surface, and that he shares his empire with Nature.

However, he rules only by right of conquest, and enjoys rather than possesses.  He can only retain by ever-renewed efforts.  If these cease, everything languishes, changes, grows disordered, enters again into the hands of Nature.  She retakes her rights; effaces man’s work; covers his most sumptuous monuments with dust and moss; destroys them in time, leaving him only the regret that he has lost by his own fault the conquests of his ancestors.  These periods during which man loses his domain, ages of barbarism when everything perishes, are always prepared by wars and arrive with famine and depopulation.  Man, who can do nothing except in numbers, and is only strong in union, only happy in peace, has the madness to arm himself for his unhappiness and to fight for his own ruin.  Incited by insatiable greed, blinded by still more insatiable ambition, he renounces the sentiments of humanity, turns all his forces against himself, and seeking to destroy his fellow, does indeed destroy himself.  And after these days of blood and carnage, when the smoke of glory has passed away, he sees with sadness that the earth is devastated, the arts buried, the nations dispersed, the races enfeebled, his own happiness ruined, and his power annihilated.

THE HUMMING-BIRD

From the ‘Natural History’