cS8 



Earth Builders. 



earth but the ashes which came from it. 

 Peas and indigo and tea and coffee are ex- 

 ceptions, they take nitrogen from the air 

 like animals. But almost every plant that 

 grows is eaten by some creature, either in 

 its green state, or when dry, or while it is 

 going to decay. In this latter stage it is 

 eaten by worms and other creatures, some 

 of them so small that they are not visible 

 without the aiti of a microscope. 



But everything is eaten, and although in 

 the process of digestion something goes 

 back to the air again, a large portion goes to 

 enrich the soil with plant food, rendering it 

 more fertile. A cow eating a ton of grass 

 or hay, assisted by what it takes from the 

 air, will make as much manure as will sup- 

 ply plant food to two or three tons of fresh 

 grass. 



And so it is that when the farmer finds his 

 crops getting poorer and poorer every year, 

 and leaves the land fallow, the worms and 

 other creatures in the soil eat all the plant 

 roots and dead leaves, and create plant food 

 which provides for a crop of weeds ; insects 

 come to eat the weeds, and birds to eat the 

 insects, and in a few years the fertility of 

 the soil is restored in whole or in part. The 

 worms and minute creatures in the soil con- 

 vert the plants into what is called the vege- 

 table mould, and the birds preying on worms 

 and insects supply what is necessary to ren- 

 der the soil fertile for grain crops. The 

 black soil is really not vegetable moukl, be- 

 cause it has all passed through the worms 

 and soil microbes, as the minute creatures 

 are called, but until lately no one knew that. 



This then is the secret of the earth's 

 fertility. Every creature that lives returns 

 more to the soil than it takes from it ; it 

 gives it all back with something added 

 which it takes from the air — finally it gives 

 its own body. Consequently, in a state of 

 nature, the soil always tends to grow richer 

 from year to year, from generation to gen- 

 eration. 



!f a new continent were sucidenlv to rise 



from the ocean, man, oxen and horses 

 could not live on it, because there would 

 be no soil to grow grass or grain on. But 

 some plants, and even some trees, want very 

 little from the soil, they take almost every- 

 thing from the air. The pine tree, you 

 know, will grow in the cracks of rocky 

 mountains. Such plants and trees would 

 soon find all the food they want. By the 

 time a vegetation of this sort had covered 

 the surface, it would provide food for 

 countless insects, which in their turn would 

 become food for birds. In time the insects 

 would cover the surface with black mowld, 

 and the birds, enriching it with their drop- 

 pings, would render it fit to grow grass and 

 grain, and thus prepare it for man and 

 beast. 



The old doctrine of transmigration of 

 souls was a myth, and the modern view 

 that all the noblest animals have descended 

 from the lowliest cannot be proved ; but 

 the doctrine of transformation of bodies is 

 a living realit}' — the self-same substances 

 which plants take from the air enter into 

 the living substance of animals, and are 

 changed from living tissue to dead tissue, 

 from animal tissue to vegetable tissue, and 

 back again through a never ending series. 



Perhaps the most wonderful fact in this 

 connection is that one of the substances, 

 called carbon, exists in the air in a quan- 

 tity not sufficient to cover the whole dry 

 land of the earth with mature forest at one 

 time. The plants and animals of one gen- 

 eration must die, to set free the carbon 

 needed for the next generation, so that the 

 carbon, which constitutes more than a fourth 

 of the bodies of living plants and animals, 

 is the very self-same carbon which entered 

 into the substance of the plants and ani- 

 mals of the pre-adamite ages, and of every 

 generation that has lived since. 



Nature is very lavish of all the other sub- 

 stances derived from the air. The rains 

 and rivers of this country wash away about 

 four inches of its surface every century, 



