FORETHOUGHT IN FARMING. 105 



the crowded remains of fishes, mollusca, seaweeds and lime- 

 stone, formed from shells and corals. All this formed a vast 

 amount of compost which, when it had emerged from the 

 waters, became the garden of a vegetation, so rank and abundant 

 as to deserve more than a passing notice. 



With a tropic sun to urge the growth, a gigantic race of veg- 

 etation overspread the land. Could the flag and ferns of our 

 day speak out, I think they would say of their ancestors, as we 

 see it elsewhere stated, there were giants in those days. Think 

 of ferns sixty or seventy feet high, and ten or twelve feet in 

 diameter, compared with ours of one-eighth or one-half of an 

 inch ! But all these gigantic ferns did not blossom and waste 

 their fragrance on a desert air. There were no eyes to appre- 

 ciate their beauty, even if it had been in proportion to their 

 size. This, however, was not the end of their creation. All 

 these were to be stored away in the storehouse of the carbon- 

 iferous age. 



Here were piled up for future use, those exhaustless beds of 

 coal, now necessary for our comfort, and of incalculable value, 

 as serving to enlarge the field of power and of knowledge. This 

 was the great vegetable age. No birds nestled amid its stalwart 

 branches. No herds fed on its luxuriant foliage. 



This age seemed to have used up the then available remains of 

 the paleozoic ages, and animal remains were again needed to pre- 

 pare a richer compost for the race of men yet to be. Soon with 

 a new creation, there came fearlessly creeping from the swarm- 

 ing waters, gigantic reptiles, as voracious as gigantic, basking 

 in the warm sunshine, when satiated with what their craving 

 appetites demanded. We must look on these huge saurians as 

 so many laboratories into which were being transmuted for 

 future use the elements of fertility. 



These cold-blooded amphibious did their work, and were laid 

 away in a tomb of rock, till after ages should disinter and 

 decompose them, and spread them far and wide over the land. 

 These are found in the rocks tliat form our mountains and our 

 hills, and every rain that pours upon them is decomposing, 

 and every freshet is spreading them in rich alluvia over our 

 meadows. These old ichthyosaurians, as they crawl disinte- 

 grated from their graves, and settle down on our own wheat or 

 cornfields, drive into beingand into market more weight of grain 



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