MUD. 



Even a prejudiced observer will readily admit that the 

 most valuable mineral ou earth is mud. Diamonds and 

 rubies are just nowhere by comparison. I don't mean 

 weight for weight, of course — mud is * cheap as dirt,' to 

 buy in small quantities — but aggregate for aggregate. Quite 

 literally, and without hocus-pocus of any sort, the money 

 valuation of the mud in the world must outnumber many 

 thousand times the money valuation of all the other 

 minerals put together. Only we reckon it usually not by 

 the ton, but by the acre, though the acre is worth most 

 where the mud lies deepest. Nay, more, the world's 

 wealth is wholly based on mud. Corn, not gold, is the 

 true standard of value. Without mud there would be no 

 human life, no productions of any kind : for food stuffs 

 of every desciiption are raised on mud ; and where no 

 mud exists, or can be made to exist, there, we say, there 

 's desert or sand-waste. Land, without mud, has no 

 economic value. To put it briefly, the only parts of the 

 world that count much for human habitation are the mud 

 deposits of the great rivers, and notably of the Nile, the 

 Euphrates, the Gauges, the Indus, the Irrawaddy, the 



