GEOLOGY OF AGRICULTURE. 65 



nutriment from deep in the ground, and depositing it 

 on the surface, and thus accumulating and mingling 

 with tjie surface soil, a rich, vegetable mould. It was 

 in this way, so far as we can judge from present ap- 

 pearances, that the Almighty prepared the soil for his 

 creatures. It was in this state that our fathers re- 

 ceived from the Infinite Father the soil of this land. 

 The soil had been formed from comminuted rocks. 

 With it had been mingled a black, carbonaceous 

 mould, extending from a few inches to several feet in 

 depth, and amounting to perhaps from five to fifty per 

 cent, of the whole. The benign, ever- working Power 

 of the universe had thus prepared the soil by such 

 agencies as He chose. Volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, 

 heat and cold, sunshine and shower, successive gene- 

 rations of plants and animals, and we know'^not what 

 other agencies, had been His servants. He had not 

 made it all a garden. He did not require them to 

 make it so at once. But He had made it capable of 

 becoming a fruitful field with such labor as they 

 could bestow, and ere long, with more labor and skill, 

 of becoming a garden, so fast as the wants of His crea- 

 tures may require. And it is not too much to say, 

 that the man, who, by skill and industry, is convert- 

 ing the portion allotted him into a garden, is so far 

 doing the will of God. I believe if there is an earthly 

 pleasure more pure, more exalted, and more approved 

 of God than any other, it is that of turning the un- 

 seemly waste into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field 

 into a garden, " with every tree that is pleasant to the 

 sight and good for food" — "to dress it and to keep 

 it." What is pleasure if this is not ? • / 



