Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/19

 ancient civilisation causes the forests to recede more and more, and that the wants and restless activity of large communities of men gradually despoil the face of the earth of the refreshing shades which still rejoice the eye in Northern and Middle Europe, and which, even more than any historic documents, prove the recent date and youthful age of our civilization. The great catastrophe which occasioned the formation of the Mediterranean, when the swollen waters of what was previously an immense lake burst through the barriers of the Dardanelles and of the Pillars of Hercules, appears to have stripped the adjacent countries of a large portion of their coating of vegetable mould. The traditions of Samothrace,[8] handed down to us by Grecian writers, appear to indicate the recentness of the epoch of the ravages caused by this great change. In all the countries which surround the Mediterranean, and which are characterised by beds of the tertiary and cretaceous periods (nummulitic limestone and neocomian rocks), great part of the surface of the earth consists of naked rock. One especial cause of the picturesque beauty of Italian scenery is the contrast thus afforded between the bare rock, and the islands if I may so call them of luxuriant vegetation scattered over its surface. Wherever the rock is less intersected with fissures, so that it retains water at the surface, and where it is covered with vegetable mould, there, as on the enchanting shores of the Lake of Albano, Italy has her oak forests, with glades as deeply embowered and verdure as fresh as those which we admire in the North of Europe.