Even the rushes in his swamps are governed by the same law.

The carelessness of nature is offensive to him; he moulds and trains on every hand, as one may see on the railway journey to The Hague.

Trees he endures only so long as they are obedient and equidistant: he likes them in avenues or straight lines; if they grow otherwise they must be pollarded.

It is true that he has not touched the Bosch, at The Hague; but since his hands perforce have been kept off its trees, he has run scores of formal straight well-gravelled paths beneath their branches.
This passion for interference grew perhaps from exultation upon successful dealings with the sea.

A man who by his own efforts can live in security below sea-level, and graze cattle luxuriantly where sand and pebbles and salt once made a desert, has perhaps the right to feel that everything in nature would be the better for a little manipulation.