VI 



FEEDING THE LAND 



AS all land is rock, more or less broken up, 

 piilverized, moistened by water and impreg- 

 nated with what the chemists call "the elements, " 

 evidently, productive soil is plant-food stored in 

 available form. Pure rock, solid or pulverized, 

 cannot be called soil, yet a heap of sand, satvirated 

 with plant-food in liquid or gaseous form, will sup- 

 port plant life. This means that while man cannot 

 make rock he can make or assemble soil. The 

 process is simple enough in theory: to mix any 

 earth with plant-food, such as may be needed. 

 Nature is carrying on this process all the time. 

 Heat, motion, electrical force (whatever that may 

 be), break up the rock. Geological change, move- 

 ments of water, ice (the glacial action), subsidence, 

 rise of strata, the indescribable cataclysms of past 

 ages, have transformed rock into earth and earth 

 into soil. We cannot account for the elements. 

 Mingling and commingling, they make life on the 

 globe possible. The wisest thing we can do is to 

 imitate nature. The process, in so far as we are 



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