Please note, there are other reprints of this seminal text from other publishers, which have poor formatting – this edition has been reformatted with care and attention to detail. This is the classic reprint of George P. Marsh’s 1864 ground breaking work on environmental philosophy and the effect of man on the natural world.”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.” – George Marsh