90 TOWN GEOLOGY. [IT. 



a green field of wheat and a basket of loaves at the 

 baker's ? And yet there is, I trust, no doubt what- 

 soever that the bread has been once green wheat, and 

 that the green wheat has been transformed into bread 

 making due allowance, of course, for the bone-dust, 

 or gypsum, or alum with which the worthy baker may 

 have found it profitable to adulterate his bread, in 

 order to improve the digestion of Her Majesty's 

 subjects. 



But you may say, " Yes, but we can see the wheat 

 growing, flowering, ripening, reaped, ground, kneaded, 

 baked. We see, in the case of bread, the processes of 

 the transformation going on : but in the case of coal 

 we do not see the wood and leaves being actually 

 transformed into coal, or anything like it." 



Now suppose we laid out the wheat on a table 

 in a regular series, such as you may see in many 

 exhibitions of manufactures ; beginning with the wheat 

 plant at one end, and ending with the loaf at the 

 other; and called in to look at them a savage who 

 knew nothing of agriculture and nothing of cookery 

 called in, as an extreme case, the man in the moon, 

 who certainly can know nothing of either ; for as there 

 is neither air nor water round the moon, there can be 

 nothing to grow there, and therefore nothing to cook 

 and suppose we asked him to study the series from 

 end to end. Do you not think that the man in the 

 moon, if he were half as shrewd as Crofton Croker 

 makes him in his conversation with Daniel O'Rourke, 

 would answer after due meditation, " How the wheat 

 plant got changed into the loaf I cannot see from my 

 experience in the moon : but that it has been changed, 

 and that the two are the same thing I do see, for I see 



