50 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



meadow-lands of our Island, you hardly know what 

 I mean ! lend me your attention for a moment, while 

 I read a short chapter from that Geological Economy 

 which experience and the clays have taught me. 



Amongst the manifold varieties which Nature 

 offers to the mind and gratitude of man, not the 

 least beneficent and beautiful is the Undulation of 

 the earth's surface. How little do we value gifts 

 and blessings that are quite familiar ! Imagine for 

 a moment a flat earth with no variety no inclination 

 of outline ; no hills, no dales, no uplands or meadows, 

 no running streams or rivers, no tufted knolls or 

 winding dells, no 'gradients? but one vast unruf- 

 fled surface, like the sea in a dead calm, or the Great 

 Desert itself: and then imagine one thing more, a 

 thing which you are in the conventional habit of 

 considering one of the greatest of agricultural bless- 

 ings a free percolating subsoil, underneath this vast 

 monotony of surface, sucking down every drop of 

 rain as it falls, and preserving not the value of an 

 eggshell of liquid for man or beast to slake his thirst 

 withal. What would you have given, under such a 

 state of things, for Two Hundred and Fifty acres of 

 CLAY SUBSOIL? Would you not have regarded 

 such a means of retaining some of the moisture given 



