THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE AGRICUL- 

 TURIST - 



By HENRY E. ARMSTRONG 



[An address delivered at the opening of the session of the S.E. Agricultural College, 



Wye, Kent] 



Some among you who have learnt to read — not merely to play 



with books but to know them as real friends, to consult them 



and consider them — will remember the lines in Tennyson's In 



Memoriam : 



They say, 

 The solid earth whereon we tread 



In tracts of fluent heat began 

 And grew to seeming random forms, 

 The seeming prey of cyclic storms. 



The day was, we are led to suppose, when our globe was a fiery 

 fused mass. Its atmosphere was a strange one in its early stages 

 —full of steam and acid fume. Gradually, the mass cooled down 

 and the crust became solid ; there is some reason to think that 

 contraction took place along lines which determined the for- 

 mation of the great ocean basins very much in their present 

 positions on the earth's surface. As the acid steam condensed, 

 falling as rain on the land, it dissolved out certain materials, 

 washing them into the oceans and at the same time carving out 

 deep valleys in every direction. The salt we know to-day may 

 well be the actual salt made in those far-off times — while all else 

 is changed. To quote again from Tennyson's poem : 



There rolls the deep where grew the tree, 



O earth what changes hast thou seen ! 



There where the long street roars, hath been 

 The stillness of the central sea. 



The hills are shadows, and they flow 



From form to form and nothing stands ; 



They melt like mist, the solid lands, 

 Like clouds they shape themselves and go. 



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