Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
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indestructable; that is, its forms may change, and by certain pro¬ 
cesses be rendered invisible. But it is matter still, and subject to 
the forces and laws of the material, world. This is true not only 
in one department of nature, but in all those crystalline com¬ 
pounds that we have just been considering, passing as they are into 
decay and dust, and returning again in new forms somewhere; it 
may be in new mineral compounds, or it may be in vegetable forms, 
and subsequently in animal forms. Then forms of matter will al¬ 
ways depend upon the nature of the forces, and physical conditions 
under which matter is placed. 
Modern science has just given to the world the fact, that what is 
true of matter in this respect, is true also of natural forces. Now, 
if this doctrine of the conservation and correlation of natural forces 
is true, we must have the following facts in connection with the 
formation and disentegration of the rocks under consideration: 
1. The chemical forces employed in the mineral kingdom in build¬ 
ing these compounds and holding them in the massive rock were 
not destroyod but imprisoned for the time being in the minerals 
and rocks which they were instrumental in building up and with¬ 
drawn from the active forces of the world only while these minerals 
and rocks maintained their forms. 
2. In the disintegration of these rocks and decomposition of 
these minerals, these imprisoned forces are to be released and re¬ 
stored to the active forces of the world, as the work of disintegra¬ 
tion and decomposition goes on. 
With this view of the subject, this little film of dust or soil rises 
before us as a question of great interest; for it is not only the ashes 
of decaying minerals, but the abode of forces just freed from their 
prisons, restored fresh to the world to play an important part in the 
transformation of this dissolving matter into new material forms. 
Nor is this all; the forces employed in disintegrating this rock and 
decomposing these minerals, atmospheric air, for instance and water, 
with what other forces and matter the} r may contain, are also em¬ 
ployed in building up this soil-formation, consequently are improved 
in the work which they are instrumental in building up, until re¬ 
leased again in other forms as plant-food and plant-forces to be 
used in building up vegetable forms of matter. The soil, then, like 
the plant and the animal, is a department in nature’s work-shop 
where the transformation of matter and forces is carried on, not by 
