EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



but it is not without its difficulties. I have no disposition to 

 controvert it, for a man who battles with the stones is quite sure 

 to have the worst of it. The original form of the earth is 

 wrapped in impenetrable obscurity. Science is doing every 

 thing she can to unfold the leaves of this wonderful book ; but 

 where they have been most successfully separated and ex 

 pounded, they are found so scratched, and torn, and blurred all 

 over, that the letters are with extreme difficulty made legible. 

 We soon learn that it was a much earlier specimen of printing 

 than has been generally supposed, and some of it in a language 

 that is lost. It does not appear to me more certain that the 

 rocks were first formed, and then portions of them reduced to 

 such a fine state of comminution as to form soils, than that the 

 earth was originally in a state of fine atoms, and then, by the 

 operation of fire, and water, and pressure from within and with 

 out, amidst violent terrene convulsions, rocks were formed, and 

 the various strata arranged. It would seem not improbable 

 that, from the earliest period of the reduction of its temperature 

 to a degree that vegetable life could exist upon it, vegetable life 

 appeared ; and by successive convulsions this vegetable life 

 itself became overwhelmed, and was transformed into those 

 immense beds of fossil deposits which occupy so large a portion 

 of the surface, or upper portion, of the globe. How afterwards 

 such vast deposits of earth took place over these beds of vege 

 table remains, can be explained only by some immense and 

 utterly inexplicable convulsion and disruption of portions of the 

 earth. It is admitted that the character of the soil often bears a 

 direct relation to the rocks which it overlays, and evidently a 

 considerable portion of it is formed from the detritus of these 

 subjacent rocks ; but the vast amount of drift or diluvium scat 

 tered over the earth s surface, and often at immense distances 

 from places where, upon the common theory, it is supposed to 

 have been formed, shows that the geological indications above 

 referred to are not infallible. 



The Museum of Economic Geology is intended to exhibit 

 specimens of various soils from the different localities in the 

 country, with illustrations, as far as they can be obtained, of 

 their peculiar adaptation to agricultural purposes ; and connected 

 with the museum is a chemical laboratory for the analysis of 

 soils which may have already been obtained, or which may be 



