Marsh's "Man and Nature" : Fountainhead of the Conservation Movement

In 1864 american diplomat, philologist and environmentalist George Perkins Marsh published Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action. Called "the fountainhead of the conservation movement" (Mumford, The Brown Decades, 78), Marsh's pioneering work gave a comprehensive scientific account of man's enormous and often destructive impact on the physical world.  Marsh warned of the dangers of the reckless misuse of land then endemic in the United States, pointing to the ruined lands of the Mediterranean region as an example of America's probable future, and called for a program to restore and rebuild the land.  His work had a significant influence on conservation movements both in the United States and in Europe, in part because of his practical orientation: he recognized the role that science must play in any rational program of land management, and believed that natural resources could be used under proper limits to improve the lot of humankind. 

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1443.