COMBINATION AND COMMINUTION. 31 



all ! and when I saw the old drainer throwing out 

 those lumps of many-coloured Clay, and Sand, and 

 Gravel, and Peat, it was really too much for me. 

 The monomania was irresistible : and the old fellow 

 must have known it; for at the very moment when 

 the paroxysm was at its height just when the extra- 

 vagant thought was flashing across me that though 

 even-body declared nem. con. that it was bad, SOME 

 OXE had pronounced it GOOD just at that very mo- 

 ment of weak hallucination, the old Lucifer, smacking 

 his lips in an odd way of his own, looked up tempt- 

 ingly in my face, with his question, ' A queer lot, Sir ! 

 What shall I do with it ?' 



Blue and red, yellow and grey, Avhite and black, 

 stiff and loose, gritty and waxy, cohesive and repel- 

 lent, soft and hard there it lay before my eyes, my 

 precious subsoil in all its Protean variety of colour, 

 texture, and consistency ; there lay the rascally sub- 

 stratum that had pulled down strong men one after 

 another who had tried to grow crops over it, exposed 

 at last and brought to daylight like an unearthed fox ; 

 there it lay, dripping away its long pent-up moisture 

 down the narrow channel that led to the newly opened 

 outlet, through that same long meadow afore-time 

 celebrated in this Chronicle ; reminding one of a fallen 



