BY GEORGE F. WORKS. 



MOTTO—" The Earth is not yet finished."— T. S. Kino. 



THE SOIL OF NEW ENGLAND. 



Our farms are becoming tetiantless. The lung 

 tissues of society supplying fresh blood to the throbbing 

 heart-centres, the cities, are becoming fewer. Almost 

 whole hamlets slough away and leave bad cavities, in 

 which the life-blood is not eliminated. We seek the 

 liomes of our ancestors; their roof-trees fell long ago ; 

 a few straggling rosebushes still blush beside the old 

 garden wall; an aged pear, or plum, sprung from a seed 

 in the old Colonial times, still yields to the blandish- 

 ments of the Blossom- Week; but desolation reigns 

 around and kine quietly crop the herbage around the 

 old hearth-stone. Many of the wind-swept hills were 

 inhabited of old. Is the race less hardy now ? Old 

 cellar places meet one at every turn ; places where the 

 roots of civilization had fastened themselves and died 

 out. Their toppling chimneys are monuments which 

 bear sad evidence of the scattering of home circles. 



Small farms are absorbed in large. The tendency is 

 toward the aggregation of estates; toward turning tilled 

 into grazing land. The hills of Scotland were formerly 

 peopled with an industrious and loyal peasantry. Now 



