MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



native trees and flowering shrubs, and its little 

 pool, under the willows, that receives the drain- 

 age. Elsewhere, beyond, and higher, the sur- 

 face of the hill was scarred with stones of all 

 shapes and sizes; orderly geology would have 

 been at fault amid its debris; — there were 

 boulders of trap, with clean sharp fissures 

 breaking through them ; — there were great flat 

 fragments of gneiss covered with gray lichens ; 

 — there were pure granitic rocks worn round, 

 — perhaps by the play of some waves that have 

 been hushed these thousand years; and there 

 were exceptional fragments of coarse red sand- 

 stone, frittered half away by centuries of rain, 

 and leaving protruding pimples of harder peb- 

 bles. In short, Professor Johnston, who ad- 

 vised (in Scotland) the determination of a 

 farm purchase by the character of the subja- 

 cent and adjoining rocks, would have been at 

 fault upon my hill-side. A short way back, 

 amid the woods, he would have found a huge 

 ridge of intractable serpentine; the boulders 

 he would have discovered to be of most various 

 quality; and if he had dipped his spade, aided 

 by a pick, he would have found a yellow, fer- 

 ruginous conglomerate, which the rains con- 

 vert into a mud that is all aflow, and which the 

 suns bake into a surface, that with the sharpest 



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