THE PLEASURES OF SCIENCE 



Pennsylvania, they are of different material and 

 are folded and thrust upward; hence they presented 

 the edges of the rock to the ice-sheet, instead of 

 broad, flat surfaces, and were not so easily dislo- 

 cated and broken up. 



As a boy I had heard through relatives who had 

 moved from the Catskills to Pennsylvania that 

 they had to build their fences of rails, as their farms 

 were quite free from rocks and stones. Now I saw 

 the reason. The stone walls I had helped build in 

 my youth, and the stones that had been in the way 

 of my hoe in the cornfield, were chargeable to the 

 old ice-sheet. But the fragments of quartz that strew 

 some of the cotton-fields of the South have another 

 explanation; they are what is left of the granite, 

 the decay of which makes up the soils of those 

 sections. 



This rudimentary knowledge of geology, com- 

 bined with a fair knowledge of the plants and trees, 

 the birds and the four-footed creatures, helps greatly 

 to make country life worth while. 



I remember the look of mingled surprise and 

 incredulity of the old farmer when I told him that 

 his soil had once been rocks; that it was not created 

 as he saw it there being turned up by his plough or 

 spade; that it had been thousands, yes, millions of 

 years in the making. He fancied that the Almighty 

 fiat had called from nothingness the stones and 

 rocks where they lay upon the soil, and that the soil 

 183, 



