“That was merely a warning to first offenders,” returned his uncle. “For a second offense the luckless person caught in the act had his nose cut off. It was a radical measure to discourage the snuff-taker: no more nose, no more snuff. But the smokers, after this horrible mutilation, persisted in their smoking. “A king of Persia devised what he thought would cure even this habit: every one caught with a pipe in his mouth had his upper lip cut off. At the same time, of course, every nose proved guilty of snuff-taking fell under the executioner’s knife. But the atrocious edict of the Persian king proved as futile as that of the Turkish emperor. Despite all the noses struck off, all the lips cut away, all the feet made to tingle under the rod, the use of tobacco still continued to spread. These fruitless severities had to be abandoned. “Other regulations sprang up here and there, less cruel, but sufficiently fruitful in fines, imprisonments, vexations of all sorts. Still nothing was of any avail; smokers and snuff-takers remained incorrigible. Finally, taking wiser counsel, the government authorities conceived a plan for making this passion, which no severity had been able to subdue, yield them large revenues. The government itself became exclusive vender of the very article it had at first proscribed with such rigor. France alone derives a yearly revenue of almost three hundred million francs from the sale of tobacco.” CHAPTER III THE ORIGIN OF FERTILE SOIL “Fertile or arable soil,” resumed Uncle Paul, “constitutes only the surface layer of earth, that which is worked by the farmer’s implements and yields nutriment to the roots of plants and promotes their development. In one place you will see bare rocks and utter barrenness; in another you find fertile soil to a depth of an inch or two, scantily carpeted with grass; and again, in a third, you come upon rich earth so deep as to maintain abundant vegetation. But nowhere does this fertile layer have an indefinite thickness: at a depth never very considerable a subsoil having the qualities of the neighboring mountains is sure to be found. How then has there come to be formed this layer of earth whence is derived all the nutriment required by plants, animals, and men? “Undermined all winter, and even the whole year round on high mountains, by the ice that forms in their slightest fissures, rocks of all kinds break into small fragments, divide into grains of sand, fall into dust, and furnish the powdery mineral matter which the rain washes away and deposits in the valleys. This as a rule is the origin of broken stones, sand, clay, and fertile soil. Ice by its expansive force has detached them from the tops of mountains and the waters have swept them away and carried them further. One can form an idea of the action of ice in crumbling rocks to make soil of them and enrich the valleys, by examining the surface of a hard road at the moment of thawing.