No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 365 



the privilege, the opportunity to make money and manhood for them- 

 selves. Wealth inherited and unearned and without judicious train- 

 ing is almost sure to make mongrels in mind and morals and non de 

 scripts in society and finance. 



"Cursed be the social wants that sin against 

 the strength of youth! 



Cursed be the social lies that warp us from 

 the living truth! 



Cursed be the sickly forms that err from 

 honest nature's rule! 



Cursed be the gold that guilds the straight- 

 ened forehead of the fool." 



Beyond good teaching, a good example and a well sustained integ- 

 rity, we have no commanding duty to our children. What we do 

 of right or wrong will logically guide or direct them. If we give to 

 them as vrell as we have derived from our ancestors, the one great 

 moral obligation to them Avill be rightly performed and fulfilled. 

 The noblest legacy we can bequeath to them is a life record without 

 reproach, and this may never be engraven on monuments of granite 

 or marble or inscribed on tables of stone; but it may be written in 

 the minds and memories of men and inscribed on the fleshly tables 

 of their hearts; and conveying to them this assurance of our life's 

 good work, and along with it, some of the precious and abounding 

 gifts of Nature and Nature's God, those that come after us may point 

 to these things and with glowing pleasure and pride say to the 

 world, "see what our fathers have done for us." This will betoken 

 the supremacy of righteous law, the exaltation of patriotism, the 

 benevolence and nobility of our American manhood and the glory of 

 our American institutions; and all these in the providence of God 

 may broaden into a splendid national philanthropy. 



GEOLOGICAL AND AGRICULTURAL OBSERVATIONS. 



By W. H. STOUT, Geologist. 



Tlie foundation of agriculture is the earth, therefore it is the most 

 important study associated with that ''most healthful, most useful, 

 and most noble employment of man" upon which depends the exist- 

 ence of the human race, deserving careful consideration. To many 

 persons, the term "geology" is understood to have reference to the 

 solid rock, minerals and metals and not to include the fine particles 

 of sands and clays constituting soils. Older writers attempted to 

 consider rocks and soils in separate classes; however, there is no 

 longer any distinction, soils being simply the smaller particles of dis- 

 integrated rock with more or less organic material incorporated. 

 The earth, upon which we are destined to spend a brief time, is but 

 an atom in the midst of countless worlds viewed by the astronomer, 

 and only about one-third of its snrfacp above water left for ns tn 

 struggle upon for a living, and finally inherit a space three feet wide 

 seven feet long and six feet deep, unless interred under modern ideas 

 to the depth of nine feet, or universal cremation is adopted to dis- 

 pose of the dead. 



