I.] THE SOIL OF THE FIELD. 37 



plants, would you. not say Those plants must have 

 been laid down here before the layers above them, just 

 as the dead leaves in the pond were? 



If you then came to a layer of limestone, would you 

 not say the same ? And if you found that limestone 

 full of shells and corals, dead, but many of them quite 

 perfect, some of the corals plainly in the very place in 

 which they grew, would you not say These creatures 

 must have lived down here before the coal was laid on 

 top of them ? And if, lastly, below the limestone you 

 came to a bottom rock quite different again, would you 

 not say The bottom rock must have been here before 

 the rocks on the top of it ? 



And if that bottom rock rose up a few miles off, 

 two thousand feet, or any other height, into hills, what 

 would you say then ? Would you say : " Oh, but the 

 rock is not bottom rock ; is not under the limestone 

 here, but higher than it. So perhaps in this part it 

 has made a shift, and the highlands are younger than 

 the lowlands ; for see, they rise so much higher ? " 

 Would not that be as wise as to say that the bottom of 

 the pond was not there before the pond mud, because 

 the banks round the pond rose higher than the 

 mud? 



Now for the soil of the field. 



If we can understand a little about it, what it is 

 made of, and how it got there, we shall perhaps be on 

 the right road toward understanding what all England 

 and, indeed, the crust of this whole planet is made 

 of ; and how its rocks and soils got there. 



But we shall best understand how the soil in the 

 field was made, by reasoning, as I have said, from the 

 known to the unknown. What do I mean ? This. 



