garden which are highly instructive. Suppose a shipload of English
colonists sent to form a settlement, in such a country as Tasmania was
in the middle of the last century. On landing, they find themselves in
the midst of a state of nature, widely different from that left behind
them in everything but the most general physical conditions. The
common plants, the common birds and quadrupeds, are as totally
distinct as the men from anything to be seen on the side of the globe
from which they come. The colonists proceed to put an end to this
state of things over as large an area as they desire to occupy. They
clear away the native vegetation, extirpate or drive out the animal
population, so far as may be necessary, and take measures to defend
themselves from the re-immigration of either. In their place, they
introduce English grain and fruit trees; English dogs, sheep, cattle,
horses; and English men; in fact, they set up a new Flora and Fauna and
a new variety of mankind, within the old state of nature. Their farms
and pastures represent a garden on a great scale, and themselves the
gardeners who have to keep it up, in watchful antagonism to the old
regime. Considered as a whole, the colony is a composite unit
introduced into the old state of nature; and, [17] thenceforward, a
competitor in the struggle for existence, to conquer or be vanquished.

Under the conditions supposed, there is no doubt of the result, if the
work of the colonists be carried out energetically and with
intelligent combination of all their forces. On the other hand, if
they are slothful, stupid, and careless; or if they waste their
energies in contests with one another, the chances are that the old
state of nature will have the best of it. The native savage will
destroy the immigrant civilized man; of the English animals and plants
some will be extirpated by their indigenous rivals, others will pass
into the feral state and themselves become components of the state of