VII 
THE FRIENDLY SOIL 
NEVER tire of contemplating the soil itself, the 
mantle rock, as the geologist callsit. It clothes 
the rocky framework of the earth as the flesh clothes 
our bones. It is the seat of the vitality of the globe, 
the youngest part, the growing, changing part. Out 
of it we came, and to it we return. It is literally our 
mother, as the sun is our father. 
The soil! — the residuum of the rocks, the ashes of 
the mountains. We know what a vast stretch of 
time has gone to. the making of it; that it has been 
baked and boiled and frozen and thawed, acted 
upon by sun and star and wind and rain; mixed and 
remixed and kneaded and added to, as the house- 
wife kneads and moulds her bread; that it has lain 
under the seas in the stratified rocks for incalculable 
ages; that chemical and mechanical and vital forces 
have all had a hand in its preparation; that the vast 
cycles of animal and vegetable life of the foreworld 
have contributed to its fertility; that the life of the 
sea, and the monsters of the earth, and the dragons 
of the air, have left their ashes here, so that when I 
stir it with my hoe, or turn it with my spade, I know 
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