CHAPTER XI 

 ORIGIN OF SOIL 



Importance of Soil. As life depends on food, so food 

 depends on soil. We know how necessary food is to us. 

 It takes but little thought to show that soil is likewise 

 necessary to food. Fish and other sea-foods we might 

 have, if there were no soil, but what would life be worth 

 if our only food was food from the water? It is the soil, 

 with the sunlight and heat on it and water in it, that makes 

 life possible for our crop plants, and it is these crop plants 

 that make life possible for us. 



The soil covers the rocks and holds, firmly and nourish- 

 ingly within itself, the roots of plants. It is of the soil 

 we think when we say "Mother Earth," for it is the soil 

 which permits Earth to be "Mother" of us all, plants and 

 animals alike. It is in the soil that man worked in the 

 long ages in which his civilization was slowly developing. 

 It is from the soil he drew his strength; from it he gained 

 the foundation of his wisdom. To-day more than one- 

 third of the human race are workers of the soil, and upon 

 their work all the rest of us depend. It is not surprising 

 that those of us who live in cities are glad sometimes to 

 "get back to the soil," to go to the country and see things 

 growing in the fields, to make a garden of our own, when 

 spring comes, or to plan to buy a farm. All this seems 

 but a response of our nature to a sort of instinct; a sort 

 of instinct implanted by that long intimacy with the soil 

 that our forefathers had. So, however far from farms 



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