Britain, France, and the European Union - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 90

temples and ruins seen over ponds and streams. The layout was infor-
mal and asymmetrical. The style soon acquired the name of “an English
garden,” and the fad spread across the Continent as a jardin anglais or an
Englischer garten . In fact, the fashion owed its origin, at least in part, to the
Chinese scholar's garden after English visitors to China sent back descrip-
tions in 1692. It was an early example of an environmental concept being
diffused internationally.
As the leader in the industrial revolution during the 19th century,
Britain was notorious for foul air and water. Government was forced to
take some action. In 1863 it established the Alkali Inspectorate to con-
trol emissions from the chemical industry, and in 1876 Parliament passed
the Rivers Pollution Prevention Act. The alkali legislation introduced the
terminology of “best practicable means,” which became the basis of a series
of individual voluntary agreements rather than mandatory national stan-
dards. This began a pattern that implementation was specific to the site
and achieved through a process of bargaining and accommodation. The
physical setting of the British Isles has minimized pollution damage. They
are windswept, and have short, fast-flowing rivers. Sewage piped into the
Channel or the North Sea was diluted with no apparent threat to bathers.
An 18th-century clergyman, Gilbert White, has earned the title
of England's first ecologist. Spending his entire life near Selborne in
Hampshire, he wrote down his daily observations year after year in jour-
nals and letters, eventually being published as The Natural History and
Antiquities of Selborne . He believed in studying birds by observation
rather than shooting them. White was one of the first to understand that
swallows and martins migrated during the winter, rather than hibernat-
ing underground as the folk tradition said. He had a keen eye for the inter-
connections of a natural community:
Earthworms, though in appearance a small and despicable link in the
chain of nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable chasm . . . worms
seem to be the great promoters of vegetation, which would proceed
but lamely without them. 1
The British Romantic Movement of the 19th century shared the German
rejection of the Enlightenment with its universalism, rationality, and sci-
ence. Likewise, its champions resented overidentification with French
ideas, culture, and language. Nineteenth-century poets like Byron,
Coleridge and Wordsworth found inspiration in nature and the untamed