I.] THE SOIL OF THE FIELD. 39 



If you wish to learn the first elements of geology 

 by direct experiment, do this : The next rainy day 

 the harder it rains the better instead of sitting at 

 home over the fire, and reading a book about geology, 

 put on a macintosh and thick boots, and get away, I 

 care not whither, provided you can find there running 

 water. If you have not time to get away to a hilly 

 country, then go to the nearest bit of turnpike road, 

 or the nearest sloping field, and see in little how 

 whole continents are made, and unmade again. 

 Watch the rain raking and sifting with its million 

 delicate fingers, separating the finer particles from 

 the coarser, dropping the latter as soon as it can, 

 and carrying the former downward with it toward the 

 sea. Follow the nearest roadside drain where it runs 

 into a pond, and see how it drops the pebbles the 

 moment it enters the pond, and then the sand in a 

 fan-shaped heap at the nearest end; but carries the 

 fine mud on, and holds it suspended, to be gradually- 

 deposited at the bottom in the still water ; and say to 

 yourself : Perhaps the sands which cover so many 

 inland tracts were dropped by water, very near the 

 shore of a lake or sea, and by rapid currents. Perhaps, 

 again, the brick clays, which are often mingled with 

 these sands, were dropped, like the mud in the pond, 

 in deeper water farther from the shore, and certainly 

 in still water. But more. Suppose once more, then, 

 that looking and watching a pond being cleared out, 

 under the lowest layer of mud, you found as you 

 would find in any of those magnificent reservoirs so 

 common in the Lancashire hills a layer of vegetable 

 soil, with grass and brushwood rooted in it. What 

 would you say but : The pond has not been always 



