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Show GARDENER'S LOVE OF SOIL Every Agriculturist Worthy the Name Considers Its Welfare as Identical Identi-cal With His Own. Every real gardener and true countryman coun-tryman loves the soil; the smell of it when turned over in the sun, the feel of it under foot, its welfare is his own; he loves to patch up the thin places, blast out rocks, deepen and enrich it. The soil is our priceless heritage from geologic time; it is the insoluble residue resi-due from the crumbling of the rock; on its maintenance depends the prosperity pros-perity of the race of man. And how we have misused and neglected neg-lected our soil! The earth has been plowed down the hill against the fences where it is allowed to grow brush, leaving the hillside and ridges bare; it has been washed away and let choke up the rivers and harbors with the finest and fattest of its substance; it has been burned over and its fertility fer-tility wasted in many other ways. My father (John Burroughs), like the true countryman that he is, always al-ways loved, indeed almost worshiped, the soil. He has had more real fun and satisfaction in late years in im proving pieces of land than in any thing else. Last summer he found huge delight in clearing up a stony, broken pasture, blowing out the rocks and building a fence with them, leveling level-ing off the ground and getting it ready for trie plow, saying: "Fifty years and more ago my father fa-ther wanted to clear this field and make a meadow of it; now I am able to do it what a fine, deep soil it has! " He would pick up a handful and rub it between his fingers or thrust the crowbar down into it to show the depth. Not to clear away any more forest, but to build up and improve some of the land already cleared, that is truly an occupation worthy of any man! John Burroughs in the Craftsman. |