THE BRAIN OF THE EARTH 



and had discharged their product over the 

 earth, there appeared the beginnings of the soil 

 of today. Other agents were at work besides 

 the ice-mills before the soil was brought into 

 proper condition for the production of vegeta- 

 tion for the enrichment or the adornment of 

 the earth. Some geologists, who have studied 

 the great frame of the earth, have maintained 

 that its surface was once a massive, unyielding 

 shell of rock, barren, without sign of life, fit 

 haunt for Death. Out of this rock came our 

 soils, rich or lean, ground by the great glaciers, 

 the ice-mills of God ; broken up by the alter- 

 nate swellings and shrinkings of heat and cold ; 

 dissolved by the restless waters through the 

 eons of pre-historic times, the water wearing 

 off particles and transporting them in solution 

 to be deposited on level plains or along lake 

 and waterways; disintegrated by certain early, 

 low forms of vegetable life, which left deposits 

 of decayed matter in among the grindings of 

 the great ice-mills, a mighty, age-long pro- 

 cess, resulting at last in the soil of the earth of 

 today, fully furnished and prepared for the use 

 of man. 



Here and there, owing to an uneven dis- 



17 



