124 TRANSACTIOXS OF THE ILLINOIS 



Soils and claj's and sands in the first place are derived from the decomposition of the 

 rocky formations at and near the earth's surfoce. The silent processes of nature 

 to-day, as in past geological ages — if I may be allowed to use the language used in my 

 address some time ago before the Northern Illinois Horticultural Society — are grinding 

 rocks into soils and re-cementing and hardening soils into rocks. There was a time 

 when the surface of the earth was covered with rocks, and rocks only, but atmos- 

 pherical and chemical agencies, the solvent power of water, dews, and dampness, and 

 aqueous forces kept in constant action processes of slow decay, and soils were 

 gradually formed and carried as sediments into ancient seas. We all know the old 

 adages about the constant dropping which wears holes in the stones; and the files of 

 time, which wear and make no noise; but few realize how important apart these 

 peaceful agencies have played in the creation of the present order of things. The frost 

 and the rain, the dissolving power of water and the mighty power of freezing and 

 cold, and other like agencies and energies of nature are all powerful to bring about the 

 mightiest results. The "tooth of time," gnawing away age after age, will nibble 

 into clay and sand, the solidest rocky ledges. If undistiu-bed by mechanical forces, 

 the superficial clays, loams, sands, subsoils, and soils covering the underlying rocky 

 masses, would be nothing but the residuum left alter the removal by percolation of 

 water of the more soluble portions of the decomposed rocks . The soil would then be 

 in situ. Regions of country underlaid by sandstone would be covered with a sandy 

 soil; limestone districts would be covered with a soil with a limestone base, and the 

 geologists could tell at a glance from the appearance of the soil what rocks lay beneath 

 it J and vice versa. 



But certain forces of nature transposed, mixed and mingled into one mass the 

 materials derived from widely separated sources. The first of these forces ai-e the 

 same silent, peaceful agencies which we see operating round us in our daily walks 

 over the earth's surface. There is a struggle going on all the time in our fields, in our 

 streets, and everywhere, building up and tearing down, construction and destruction, 

 an ever balanced antagonism. Gentle rains and earth-born torrents, little trickling 

 rills and strong streams are tearing down the soil from the hill sides and bearing it 

 away to the lower levels. The small water-plowed trench of to-day next year 

 becomes a chasm, and ages hence a hollow, and the transported materials have been 

 built up in alluvial deposits, or are the fillings in in the bottom of some stream. 

 Alternate freezing and thawing helps along the varying struggle, and God's great 

 plowshare, the frost, runs annually through the surface, mellowing the whole. 



These familiar, always acting, somewhat silent agencies, in time produce great 

 results. They mix the soil, they transport it to some extent, but they never carry it 

 long distances from its place of origin, nor do they cany the heavy masses of the drift 

 materials for hundreds of miles away from their parent ledges. Other and mightier 

 forces did this, and while doing it, they ground the stones into clays, and the clays into 

 impalpable powder, as the wheat kernels are ground into supeiUne flour between the 

 upper and nether mill stone. They were the mills of the gods, which ground exceed- 

 ingly slow, but ground exceedingly small. 



There was some tremendous force, which tore the boulders from their parent out- 

 crops in the distant Lake Superior regions, and drifted them on their journey to the 

 South; which grooved and planed the surface of the solid rocks, and strewed for hun- 

 dreds of miles in its track beds of clay and sand and gravel, and mingled, mixed, 



