TIME AND CHANGE 



entlated and their complex water-systems estab- 

 lished till well into Tertiary times — in short, that 

 they have passed more and more from the simple 

 to the complex, from the disorganized to the organ- 

 ized. When man comes to draw his sustenance 

 from their breasts, may they not be said to have 

 reached the mammalian stage ? 



The fertile plain and valley and the rounded hill 

 are of slow growth, immensely slow. But any given 

 stage of the earth has followed naturally from the 

 previous stage, only more and more and higher and 

 higher forces took a hand in the game. First its ele- 

 ments passed through the stage of fire, then through 

 the stage of water, then merged into the stage of air. 

 More and more the aerial elements — oxygen, car- 

 bon, nitrogen — have entered into its constituents 

 and fattened the soil. The humanizing of the earth 

 has been largely a process of oxidation. More than 

 disintegrated rock makes up the soil; the air and the 

 rains and the snows have all contributed a share. 



The history of the soil which we turn with our 

 spade, and stamp with our shoes, covers millions 

 upon millions of years. It is the ashes of the moun- 

 tains, the leavings of untold generations of animal 

 and vegetable life. It came out of the sea, it drifted 

 from the heavens ; it flowed out from the fiery heart 

 of the globe; it has been worked over and over by 

 frost and flood, blown by winds, shoveled by ice, 

 — mixed and kneaded and moulded as the house- 



14 



