114 MY FARM. 



This billow of hill, dipped down between my 

 home and the stone cottage, into a little valley, 

 which I have transmuted, as before described, into a 

 lawn of grass land, with its clumps of native trees 

 and flowering shrubs, and its little pool, under the 

 willows, that receives the drainage. Elsewhere, 

 beyond, and higher, its surface was scarred with 

 stones of all shapes and sizes ; orderly geology 

 would have been at fault amid its debris ; there were 

 boulders of trap, with clean sharp fissures breaking 

 through them ; there were great flat fragments of 

 gneiss covered with gray lichens ; there were pure 

 granitic rocks worn round, perhaps by the play of 

 some waves that have been hushed these thousand 

 years ; and there were exceptional fragments of 

 coarse red sandstone, frittered half away by centu- 

 ries of rain, and leaving protruding pimples of harder 

 pebbles. In short, Professor Johnston, who advised 

 (in Scotland) the determination of a farm purchase 

 by the character of the subjacent and adjoining 

 rocks, would have been at fault upon my hillside. A 

 short way back, amid the woods, he would have 

 found a huge ridge of intractable serpentine ; the 

 boulders he would have discovered to be of most 

 various quality; and if he had dipped his spade, 

 aided by a pick, he would have found a yellow, fer- 

 ruginous conglomerate, which the rains convert into 



