Controversy over the claim that sugar depleted the soil and stunted subsequent rice crops reached a stalemate when both sugar scientists and their critics were accused of selectively choosing evidence according to political bias…

This paper examines the reception of Marsh’s ideas in New Zealand in the 1870s along with the ideas of the largely-forgotten Titus Smith about human impacts upon the vegetation of Nova Scotia in the nineteenth century, prompting reflection upon the relevance of tales of environmental understanding from two colonial realms for the practice of environmental history in the twenty-first century.

This article challenges the premise that Marsh was unique in laying out an ecological justification for conservation. It suggests that these principles were common currency in early American natural history.

George Perkins Marsh, United States minister to Italy, renowned as a linguist and a geographer, was a fitting choice to be named arbiter of a disputed Italo-Swiss boundary segment, the alpe of Cravairola, north of Domodossola and west of Locarno, in 1874.