ENGLISH SOIL

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1872, 20 June 1888, Page 3

ENGLISH SOIL

The soil of Eog!an<? does not seem to be worn out, to judge by the wonderful verdare sad the laxartaace of vegetation. It contains a great museum of geological specimens, and a series of historical strata whioh are among the moit instructive of hom^n reco dr. I do hot pretend to much knowledge cf geology. The most intarcstlog goologlcal otj oi« m our New Eog'and that I can tblak of, are the groat boulders and the ccratohed and smoothed aurfioo of the rooks ; the fossil footprints m the valley of tbe Oonnectiout; the tribbitea found at Qiincy Bat (he readers of Hugh Miller remember what a varioty of foanils he found m the strotifi id rooks of hia little inland, and the mußearm are full of just euch objects. When it cornea to underground j historical; rello?, tbe poverty of Neiv England as oompared with the wealth of Old England ia very striking. Stratum after stratum carriro the explorer through tbe relics of successive invaders. After parsing through iha characteristic layers of different races, ho oomea upon a Roman pavement, and below this the weapons and ornaments of a tribe of ancient Brltonc. One cannot a" rike aopadoint? the earth m Great Britain without a fair chance of some surprise m the form (fa Saxon coin, or a Celtic implement, or a Rormn fibula. Nobody expoats any such. pliailng Burprlsß In a Now England fuld, One must bo oontent with an Indian arrowhead or two, now and then a peatle and mortar, or a stone ppe. A top dressing of antiquity is all he can look for. The *>U is not humanised enough to be Interpsting ; whereas m England to much of lb has been trodden by human feet, built on m the form of human habitation?, n»y, hflo been Itself a part of preceding generations of human beings, that it is iv a kind of dumb sympathy with thoso who tread its turf. Perhaps It Is not literally true thst ' One half her soil hai walked the reit, la poets, heroes, martyrs, sages ;' but so many of all these lie within it that the whole mother island Is a oampo aanto t j all who claim the same blood en that which runs m the veins of her unweaued children. — Dr Oliver W. Holmes, m tha " Atlantlo Monthly."