564 Home Nature-Study Course. 



another crop of lichens and other growing (organic) things and those 

 too will in time die and find their grave in the thimble full of soil. 



This is the process in miniature whereby stone flour and organic 

 matter began to make soil. Let the crop of lichens grow and die for a 

 thousand years, the accumulation during that time will be quite percep- 

 tible and because of the increase of the grave, the stature of plants would 

 increase also. A thousand years is a long time as compared with our 

 lives, but in Nature it is as but yesterday. I think the Bible says some- 

 thing of the sort. 



Here let me give you a definition of the soil that everybody may 

 remember. 



The soil is the Sepulcher and the Resurrection of all Life. 



This is literally true — as true as the statement that coal is bottled 

 sunshine — sunshine that encompassed the earth untold centuries ago. 

 The sunshine became locked up in vegetation and by a process of Nature, 

 the vegetation was changed to coal. 



As I have told you, the tiny lichen found its sepulcher — its grave — 

 in the thimble full of stone flour and from this sepulcher — came the 

 resurrection of other lichens. As the process was repeated year after 

 year and hundreds of years after hundreds of years, the fuller and larger 

 became the sepulcher and therefore the greater the resurrection, by which 

 I mean more plants and larger plants developed. The process continued 

 until the greater resurrection could be seen in the production of the 

 giant trees, which the pioneers found in this country. 



When next you pass through the cuts in the highway or railroad 

 you will watch not only for the stone flour, but you will also watch to see 

 the thickness of the sepulcher, I mean the soil and the plant growth I 

 have spoken of as the resurrection. 



LESSON CXXXHL 



THE MIXING OF HUMUS WITH STONE FLOUR. 



Purpose. — To teach the pupils to identify humus (organic matter) 

 and to understand the part it plays in fertile soils. 



We can make soil artificially. We may bring together the stone . 

 flour and vegetable mould' and mix them mechanically. You may give 

 an illustration to your class by getting leaf mould from the woods and 

 mixing with it stone flour of sand or of shale rock. If plants had means 

 of expressing in words their sense of comfort, we might learn that the 

 task was done a little clumsily with your hands as compared with nature's 

 way, yet you can demonstrate that plants will thrive better when planted 

 in the mixture than when in stone flour alone. I will say that nature 

 has many ways of mixing the ingredients of the soil, some of which I 



