tively determine the time taken in the formation of the four feet of 

 soil next to the rock over the average domain where such depth 

 obtains, it would be found above rather than below forty thousand 

 years. Under such an estimate, to preserve good working depth, 

 surface wastage should not exceed some such rate as one inch in one 

 thousand years. When our soils are gone we too must go, unless we 

 shall find some way to feed on raw rock or its equivalent." 



So there is something in the story of the pleasant land. Search all 

 the dictionaries through, comb out all the rhetoric books, and you 

 couldn't get a happier phrase than that: "The pleasant land." It is 

 excellent. It is perfect. Like any other savage, you feel a deep thrill 

 of delight when you see the vast pictures of the unhurt out-of-doors. 

 You have delight in the sight of green trees, of growing grasses and 

 nodding flowers. This panorama of hill and dale, of rolling lands 

 and forest-covered valleys and lofty mountains pleases you. Why? 

 It is because all this was laid out in the intent of Nature to produce 

 you and me and support us. It is beautiful in the beauty of utility. 

 It is laid out on precisely the right lines to keep up the balance of 

 the aforesaid little drops of water and little grains of sand, of which 

 the one supports the other in the making of this pleasant land. It got 

 its contours out of that balance. We grew out of the contours. This 

 vast and splendid landscape is the portrait of our mother. We forget 

 the hymn about it. Like a weak, irritable, nasty-tempered child, we 

 strike the great Mother in the face, presuming on her vast indiffer- 

 ence or her vast pity. And all the while Man is only the last animal 

 that has been invented, and some time there will be a successor for 

 him. If we destroy the soil we hasten that day when the successor 

 shall come. Now the undeniable truth is that we are spending more 

 than our inch of soil per thousand years. 



Civilized man, money-mad business man, crazed man, average man, 

 is doing all he can to destroy the balance between the little drops and 

 the little grains. Not only is he doing all he can to invite the suc- 

 cessor of man in the scheme of life, but he is hastening all he can that 

 incidental intermediate thing to give it, perhaps, the only interest- 

 ing form into which the statement can be put in the terms of com- 

 mercial Today the show-down between the American standard of 

 living and that of other peoples who never had so big a bank account 

 as ours, and who, therefore, learn to save. 



This hymn of the soil is the one great hymn. It sings of the one 

 great heritage of life. We speak of this or that man "owning" thus 

 or so much of the earth's surface. That, of course, is impossible. 

 He takes it or borrows it, perhaps, but he can own no more than six 

 feet of it, and that only for a short time. The soil belongs to Life. 

 The "buried years" resent any embezzlement of our great heritage. 

 The soil is owned by plants, by animals, by men of this or that nation, 

 this or that age, that past, yonder future. If we sin against the soil, 

 ours will be the Great Punishment which is to say, extinction, 

 oblivion. If you plow badly, it is you for the star-dust ! 



Even before Wall Street was invented there was more water than 

 anything else in the world. Finally, on the little crust of land some 

 tiny plant began to grow, no one knows just when. Perhaps at one 



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