Firs and pines a hundred spans round: the natural environment of Lingnan -- All deeply forested and wild places are not malarious: human settlement and ecological change in Lingnan, 2-1400 CE -- Agriculture is the foundation: economic recovery and development of Lingnan during the Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644 -- All the people have fled: war and the environment in the mid-seventeenth-century crisis, 1644-83 -- Rich households compete to build ships: overseas trade and economic recovery -- It never used to snow: climatic change and agricultural productivity -- There is only a certain amount of grain produced: granaries and the role of the state in the food supply system -- Trade in rice is brisk: market integration and the environment -- Population increases daily, but the land does not: land clearance in the eighteenth century -- People said that extinction was not possible: the ecological consequences of land clearance.