Excerpt from The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 73: July to December, 1908 It is a familiar geologic deduction that for long eras rains have fallen on the lands and soils have grown in depth, while the surface has been washed away. Soil-production and soil-removal have run hand in hand, and yet they have been so controlled by the adjustments of nature that no large part of the surface has been swept bare enough to altogether exclude vegetation. More than this, it appears that the usual adjustments of nature make rather for increasing fertility of soil than depletion. It is true that at intervals deformations of the earth have intervened giving mountainous heights and precipitous surfaces from which the soil-product has been washed faster than it could be produced; and desert conditions have also intervened locally; but these diastrophic effects are perhaps rather rejuvenations necessary to the preservation of the continents than destructive episodes. Whenever such heights and slopes have been raised, the atmosphere and its waters have at once begun to grade them down, to cover them with soil, and to give to them a renewed habitability. So, in these and other ways, the gifts of the great past now present themselves to us as the product of a marvelous system of control which has checked excesses and forced movement toward the golden means in which have lain pro ductivity and congeniality to life. Thus has come our inheritance of a land suitable for habitation, of a soil-mantle of great fertility, of a precipitation conducive to productiveness, and of a system of streams endowed with great possibilities of water-foods, of power and of navigation. We do not hesitate to enter into the inheritance, but what part shall we take in the regulative system that produced. And maintains it? How shall we cooperate with nature in rendering conditions still more serviceable to ourselves, and in transmitting a still greater inheritance for our successors? Clearly we may use the proper revenues of our inheritance, but surely we should not r'ob our successors of their share in it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.