Editoriai 



The Northern Mewuk say: "In the beginning the world was rock. Every 

 year the rains came and fell on the rock and washed off a little; this made earth. 

 By and by plants grew on the earth and their leaves fell and made more earth. 

 Then pine trees grew and their needles and cones fell every year and with the 

 other leaves and bark made more earth and covered more of the rock. 



"If you look close at the ground in the woods you will see how the top is 

 leaves and bark and pine needles and cones, and how a little below the top these 

 are matted together, and a little deeper are rotting and breaking up into earth. 

 This is the way the world grew — and is growing still." 



This fragment of dynamic geology is taken from C. Hart Merriam's 

 The Dawn of the World, a book recording the lore, chiefly mythic, of the 

 Me wan Indians of California. The Northern Mewuk live on the western 

 slope of the Sierra Nevada, a region well calculated to exhibit the relations 

 of regolith and soil to bed rock and to vegetation. 



G. K. G. 



675 



