COMBINATION AND COMMINUTION. 31 



bad soils a better still, and four bad ones the best of 

 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 w^hen 

 the paroxysm was at its height just when the 

 extravagant thought was flashing across me that 

 though everybody declared nem. con. that it was bad, 

 SOME ONE had pronounced it GOOD just at that 

 very moment of weak hallucination, the old Lucifer, 

 smacking his lips in an odd way of his own, looked 

 up temptingly in my face, with his question, ' A 

 queer lot, Sir ! What shall I do with it ? ' 



Blue and red, yellow and grey, white 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 

 substratum 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 



