QUOTE : the old broad-gauged, integrative “natural history” began to fragment into specializations. History increasingly began an archival pursuit, carried on by urban scholars; there was less and less dirt on it. Recently, however, that drift toward an unnatural history has run up against a few hard facts: dwindling energy supplies, population pressures on available food, the limits and costs of technology. A growing number of scholars, consequently, have begun to talk about something called “environmental history” … the new history will re-create, though in a more sophisticated form, the old parson-naturalists synthesis. It will, that is, seek to combine once again natural science and history … into a major intellectual enterprise that will alter considerably our understanding of historical processes. What the inquiry involves … is the development of an ecological perspective on history.