UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES The RALPH D. REED LIBRARY VNT OF HEOLOGY UNIVi :; AMFORNIA LOS AWGELKS, CAJUF. SCIENTIFIC SERIES, BY AGNES GIBERNE. 1. SUM, MOON, AND STARS. A BOOK OF ASTRONOMY FOR BEGINNERS. Illus. I2mo 1.50 " Here in a comparatively small and inexpensive volume, we have presented, in a charming way, what will give to any reader a very intelligent view of our solar system, and of the whole planetary world." Parish Visitor. " Let it not be imagined that it is a dry compendium, or that it deals only with familiar facts; on the contrary, the volume is full of information that will be found fresh and highly entertaining." Christian World. 2. AMONG THE STARS: OR, WONDERFUL THINGS IN THE SKY. i2mo 1.50 " The form which the book takes is that of a story, with a quiet thread of per- sonal interest running through it; and the text is freely illustrated by helpful wood- cuts. MissGiberne is both a skilled story- writer and a writer of accurate books of popular science; and in this bright book she really takes pains to combine both characters, and yet to produce a work which is not beyond the comprehension of the youngest child who is able to read." S. S. Times. 3. THE WORLD'S FOUNDATIONS: OR, GEOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. Illus. i2mo 1.50 " The writer's object in the present volume, as in the admirable one on Astron- omy wnich preceded it, is worthy of special commendation. She hopes to teach the young, and all beginners in scientific study, whether young or grown-up, that there is a Christian way of looking at the wonders which have been discovered in the heavens and in the earth. In these pages she tells the story which geologists are wont to tell, though never in so simple and clear a manner, and not always in so reverent a spirit. This author has, we are glad to see, made scientific accuracy an important point, so that the book is both wholesome and reliable." Churchman. 4. FATHER ALDUR: A WATER STORY. I2mo. . . 1.50 It is a significant thing that so many of the new books deal with the wonders of nature, presenting them in such form that they may be comprehended by the most sluggish mind. This augurs well for the intelligence of the rising generation. The latest acquisition in this field comes from the press of Carter Bros., under the name of FATHER ALDUR. Miss Agnes Giberne uses her facile pen in this work to spread before us the history of rivers, tracing them through all their way from the springs at their source until they are lost in the ocean." 5. THE OCEAN OF AIR. I2mo 1.50 ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS. THE WORLD'S FOUNDATIONS GEOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS BY AGNES GIBERNE AUTHOR OF "SUN, MOON AND STARS," ETC. OToU1*4 Th-Ju Iai4 tSeToundation.V.tfle EVK."-Pi?A* ?. 3f,: NEW YORK ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS 530 BROADWAY Cambridge St. Johnlana Press of Stereotype Foundry, John Wilson & So*. Suffolk Co., N. Y. PU8i.fr: I.J.M /.RY GRAND KA^HJS, MUH. AUG 98 G-35 VO PREFACE. THE very warm and hearty reception accorded to my little book on Astronomy, has been my best encouragement in entering upon the domain of the sister science, Geology. This companion-volume to "Sun, Moon and Stars" is written upon much the same plan, and is intended for the same class of readers for Beginners of all kinds, whether poor or rich, whether boys, girls, or grown-up people. My object in writing it has been not so much to supply a certain amount of technical knowledge, for this may be easily obtained from ordinary class-books, as to open the eyes of others to the hidden wonders and possibilities of enjoyment which lie folded in this little-studied branch of science. Geology is counted by many to be a dull subject. But if it has its dry bones, it has also its forms of poetic beau- ty, its scenes of loveliness, its chords of sublime harmony. Geology is counted by others to be a dangerous subject. But if so, the danger lies in ourselves, not in Geology. Man's haste in decision, and his readiness to put faith in 490708 vi Preface. unproved theories, may lead him astray. The study of God's truths, if rightly undertaken, cannot cause his feet to wander. Geology speaks to us, as surely as the Bible itself speaks to us, of the Creator and His ways, albeit in terms more ambiguous, in language more easily misunderstood. The one is His Word, the other is His Handiwork. That the one should contradict the other is not possible. That the one and the other should contain mysteries past our power to fathom, is only what we might expect from the Word and the Handiwork of an Infinite God. I have merely to state, in conclusion, that neither time nor pains have been spared in the endeavor to insure accu- racy as well as interest. The leading Geological writers of England and of America have been my authorities. Thanks, lastly, are due for the kind and able criticisms of competent friends, who have generously given time and thought to the examination of my proof-sheets. WORTON HOUSE, EASTBOURNE, August, 1 88 1. CONTENTS. PART I. HOW TO READ THE RECORD. CHAP. PA4 The World's Foundations. lime, the diatoms' shells are made of flint. The following has been offered as a possible explana- tion. At the bottom of a tolerably deep sea, where rhizopods were living and dying in countless my- riads, multitudes of their shells would be ever sinking and helping to build up a floor of white chalk. Animals of larger size would also live and die in the waters, and many of their stony remains are found in the chalk layers. Then there would come a change how brought about we do not know and where the rhizopods had abounded the diatoms would next for a while abound, their flinty shells taking a turn at sea-bottom building. They would not flourish in sufficient quantities to make deep strata, like the rhizopods, but as they sank to the ocean-floor, they would collect round shells or sponges lying there, or gather into small masses, and thus would the hard flints be formed, later to be covered by fresh layers of chalk. The tendency to collect round some small hard substance, and to become united to it, has often been observed, alike in minute shells and in fine sand or earth. There is, however, a difficulty in admitting this explanation as very probable or conclusive, for the structure of flint, examined under a microscope, does not show a collection of flinty shells, but a solution The Age of Chalk. 105 of flint that is, flint which has been dissolved, often containing the tiny spores of non-flowering plants. If chalk and flint are now being formed below the Atlantic, a question may present itself to some minds, Are we then still in the Chalk Age? No, certainly not. The chalk age ended long ago. We have already seen that Coal-making took place in the Secondary Period, yet that was not the age of Coal. Each separate Age had its great leading Facts; its principal Rock-formations; its chief kinds of Animal life; but other rock-build- ing went on, and other kinds of animals lived and flourished, alongside with them, though in a lesser degree; and so it is now. Rhizopod-shells are thus the chief material of which chalk is composed. It has been calculated that a cubic inch of chalk contains often about one million shells, yet even they are much larger than the diatom-shells. What must be the count- less multitudes in the thousands of miles of the vast Chalk-formation ! How long a time was occupied by the building up of the whole, it would be vain to attempt to calculate. Such calculations sink into mere loose 1 66 The World's Foundations. guesses, built upon an "if" which is built upon nothing. We do not know with any certainty how quickly chalk may in the present be formed; and if we did, that would not help us with regard to the past. In the great Chalk Age the ocean prob- ably abounded with rhizopods to an amount never equalled at any other time; and the work of build- ing up would have been in that case much more rapid than it seems to be now. In America, although there is the so-called Chalk- formation, it consists chiefly of green-sand, clay, limestone, and other rocks, but not of pure white chalk. In Europe, although sandstone and lime- stone are found, chalk is the principal material. The geography of the Age has points of in- terest. The Chalk of Europe shows that broad tracts of land still lay deep under water deeper perhaps than in some previous times. Europe could indeed have been scarcely a continent then, in the true sense of the word, but was rather an immense collection of islands, with its largest amount of dry land to the north. The Alps and the Pyrenees in Europe, the Himalayas in India, the Rocky Mountains and the Andes in America, were still all beneath the ocean or only The Age of Chalk. 167 raised a little way out of it, possibly the higher peaks showing, but no more. A great part of the south of England and the north of France had salt water rolling over them, filled with millions upon millions of rhizopods. With regard to Vegetable-life a change comes with the Chalk Age, and trees and plants of modern days burst upon us in full-blown perfection, with really startling suddenness. Up to that date no remains have been discovered of any plants be- longing to the higher classes, unless, perhaps, one or two doubtful specimens. Now, however, the monotonous repetition of only flowerless kinds sud- denly ceases. For at Aix-la-Chapelle, in rock-layers belonging to nearly the close of the Chalk Age, a large quan- tity of plant-remains have been found. Among them are as usual the fossils of ferns and pines. But in addition there are fossils of the Oak, the Beech, the Sycamore, the Poplar, the Willow, the Walnut, the Myrtle, the Fig, the Maple, the Mag- nolia, the Holly, the Hickory, the Banksia, and others. Also the first fossil palm-leaves have been met with on Vancouver's Island, in rocks believed to belong to the same period. 1 68 The World's Foundations. With regard to Animal-life, the great reptiles continued to abound, side by side with the tiny rhizopods. Snake-reptiles and swimming saurians in the ocean, crocodiles of old and new kinds in the rivers, flesh-eating and plant-eating bird-reptiles on the land, flying reptiles in the air, all these lived still, as through earlier Secondary ages, but they were nearing their destruction. For a while they flourished side by side with the fig, and the myrtle, and the magnolia. Then, though the frail plants lived on, the mighty beasts came to their end. Birds of large size seem to have existed in con- siderable numbers. Several fossil bird-skeletons have been found in America; one of a diver, five feet and a half high. Among the living creatures which ranged the ocean, none is more interesting than the beautiful spiral ammonite. The first ammonites, so far as we know, were in the Age of Fishes, but they were then rare. It was not until the Secondary Period that they abounded. One fossil ammonite, found in English rocks, is no less than a yard in diameter; and from this the fossils range downwards to tiny specimens an inch or less across. Sometimes they are found uncoiled, but more commonly coiled. The ammonite, like the trilobite of earlier times, The Age of Chalk. 169 has died completely out of existence, and is no longer to be seen alive. A few specimens lingered on after the Secondary Period, but the Age of Am- monites ended with the Age of Chalk. At the close of the Chalk Age, which is also the close of the Secondary Period, a great and remark- able destruction of life seems to have taken place. Whether this destruction was sudden or gradual is a question about which opinions differ the simple fact being that nobody knows. Some believe that thousands of animals were swept out of existence in a short space of time; since they are found to have lived up to the close of the Chalk Age, and then they are no more seen. Others suggest that the seemingly abrupt change is caused only by intermediate rock-layers having been washed away. They argue that animals probably lived and died through long ages between the record of which has been lost one kind after another slowly disappearing and giving place to new kinds. All we actually know is that such a break abrupt in appearance, at all events does ex- ist. We have the Chalk Rocks, the last of the Middle-Life Period, full of animals of Secondary 170 The World's Foundations. times. Immediately above them we have the more modern rocks, full of animals of "New-Life" days, all entirely different from animals of Middle-Life days. It is easy to imagine possible rocks between the two, belonging to a possible intervening Age, filled with possible animals, partly like those in the up- permost of the Middle-Period Rocks, and partly like those in the lowermost of the New-Period Rocks, thus forming a link to unite the two, or a bridge to span the chasm. But imaginations are not facts to build upon, and as yet such half-way rocks have not come to light. It is true, discovery has been made of certain lay- ers which seem to date later than the Secondary Chalk, and earlier than the Third-Period sands and clays. Each of these, however, was found to con- tain distinctly either the animals of Middle-time, or the animals of New-time, and not the animals of a stage lying between the two. So the layers were clearly only a part either of Middle-Life or of New- Life Rocks, and the position of affairs remains just the same as before. The chasm stands as wide as ever. We still pass at a leap from one Period to the next. In all Europe, in all Asia, and in nearly all The Age of Chalk. 171 America, not one single kind of living creatures in Third-Period Days has been found precisely like one single kind in preceding Secondary Days. In the Rocky Mountains only, some specimens may be the same, though even this is doubtful. It is not, of course, absolutely impossible that throughout this vast extent of country great masses of rock, lying between the two Periods, may have been washed away a whole chapter, as it were, neatly torn out of the book. But though not im- possible, it would certainly be very extraordinary. Such a tremendous and wholesale destruction of strata, over Europe, Asia, and America, at one par- ticular point of time in geological history, would be at least as remarkable, in whatever manner it came about, as the most wholesale and sudden destruc- tion of Animal-life through the world at that same point of time. Which of these wonderful events, however, really took place we cannot say. We only see the gap the break the change. We only see that animal- life did so pass through a transition some kinds dying quite out some kinds remaining on, the same yet not quite the same; and with them the creation of entirely new kinds, higher in the scale than any before. 172 The World's Foundations. Signs are sometimes observed in the chalk of possible ice-action. Certain big stones and boul- ders, clustered here and there amid chalk-layers, are exceedingly perplexing, except under the sup- position that they were dropped upon the half- formed chalk by icebergs floating as far south as English seas. This, if true, seems to tell of a possible change of climate in the earth, towards or at the close of Secondary days. It may be that such a change, from long-continued mildness to cold, was the cause of the wide-spread destruction of life. Here again the question arises whether such a change of climate would have been sudden or grad- ual, and here again we cannot reply with any cer- tainty. A gradual change would mean only a gradual passing away of one kind after another. A sudden change would mean sudden and wide- spread death. It is a singular fact that signs of such a death, yet of a death which has not injured the bones, has been noted by geologists in the rep- tiles of those days; just as it was noted in the fishes of earlier times. The upheaving of mountain-ranges, the rising or sinking of the ocean-bottom here or there, might have entirely changed the directions of warm or cold The Age of Chalk. 173 ocean-currents, and might thus at any time have brought about a complete alteration of climate in any land or continent in the world. Such risings or sinkings again might be either sudden or slow. But beyond broad statements of what " might have been," particular guesses and closely worked-out theories are worth little. This chapter can scarcely be better ended than with the following beautiful lines, descriptive of the Middle-Life Period. "The Nautilus and the Ammonite Were launched in storm and strife; Each sent to float, in its tiny boat, On the wide wild sea of life. "And each could swim on the ocean's brim, And anon its sails could furl; And sink to sleep in the great sea deep, In a palace all of pearl. "And theirs was a bliss more fair than this That we feel in our colder time, For they were rife in a tropic life, In a brighter happier clime. " They swam 'mid isles whose summer smiles No wintry winds annoy; Whose groves were palm*(?) whose air was balm, Where life was only joy. It was once believed that palms existed much earlier than is now supposed. 1/4 The World's Foundations. "They roamed all day through creek and bay, And traversed the ocean deep; And at night they sank on a coral bank. In its fairy bowers to sleep. " And the monsters vast of ages past, They beheld in their ocean caves; And saw them ride in their power and pride, And sink in their billowy graves. "Thus hand in hand, from strand to strand They sailed in mirth and glee, Those fairy shells with their crystal cells, Twin creatures of the sea. . . "But they came at last to a sea long past, And as they reached its shore, The Almighty's breath spake out in death, And the Ammonite lived no more. " And the Nautilus now, in its shelly prow, As o'er the deep it strays, Still seems to seek in bay and creek Its companion of other days. "And thus do we, in life's stormy sea, As we roam from shore to shore, While tempest-tost, seek the loved the lost But find them on earth no more." G. F. RICHARDSON. CHAPTER XVIII. THE AGE OF MAMMALS. "Which by His strength setteth fast the mountains, being girded with power." PSA. Ixv. 6. WE have now reached the last great division of Geological History. It will be remembered that the whole of this strange Fossil-History, written in the rocks, is di- vided into three portions. Sometimes the three are described as Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary; the meaning of the terms being simply, First, Second, and Third. Sometimes they are described in words which when translated, mean, Ancient-Life Period, Mid- dle-Life Period, and New-Life Period. Again, they may be described as the Period of Lower Animals and Fishes, the Period of Reptiles, and the Period of Mammals. Or, once more, we might term them the Ancient 176 The World's Foundations. History, the Mediaeval History, and the Modern History, of Geology. It is upon the last of these three that we are now entering. Although the Tertiary or Third Period lies nearer to our own days than any before, yet the animals which lived throughout the greater part of it were very different from those which live now. Not one single fish, or reptile, or bird, or quadruped, known to have existed then, was exactly the same as any one fish, reptile, bird, or quadruped, existing now. But this was not quite the case with sea-shells, and fresh-water shells. At the beginning of the Tertiary Period, indeed, very few even of these were the same as any seen now; still there were a few, and the number went on gradually increasing. By the close of the Tertiary, and the beginning of the Post-Tertiary or After-Tertiary, about ninety-five in every hundred shells were exactly the same as those of the present time. So the first part of this Third Period is called the " Dawn of Recent," and the middle part has a name which means that "Less" than half of the shells were "recent," and the latter part has a name which means that "More" than half of the shells were "recent." 1. Footprints of a Bird. 4. Trilobite. W. Fonndation.- 2. Mndcrncks. 5. Ripplemarki- p. 176. The Age of Mammals. 177 The rocks of this Period in Europe and in Amer- ica bear a general likeness one to another. They lie close over the Chalk Formation, with the marked break between the two, as to kinds of animal re- mains, described in the last chapter. An exception is found to this widespread "break" in the Rocky Mountains, where the change from Secondary rocks to those above is gradual. Fossils abound in the Third-Period rocks, though more in some parts than in others. There are lay- ers of earth entirely made up of animalcule-remains, so small as to look like fine dust to the naked eye. Also rocks, to a vast amount, are largely composed of a kind of rhizopods, not tiny in size like those described in earlier chapters, but flat, coin-shaped, and about as large as a threepenny or sixpenny piece. They are called Nummulites, from two words, one Latin and the other Greek, meaning "coin" and "stone." The wide reaches of country over which num- mulites are found, show that these small creatures must have lived in multitudes past imagination. The Day of Rhizopods, which came in during the Reptile Age, seems to have continued through part of the Mammal Period. Some limestones consist almost wholly of num- 178 The World's Foundations. mulites. Rocks containing these coin-shaped fossils extend throughout a great part of south Europe, south Asia, and north Africa. They are found in the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Apennines, the Carpathians, the Himalayas, also in Egypt, in Afghanistan, in Persia, in Thibet, in Japan, in Java. Moreover, though the animals must all have lived and died in ocean-waters, they are found at great heights above the sea-level. The summit of the Dent du Midi, for instance, over ten thousand feet high, is formed of nummulite rock. If then, as is believed, all the rocks holding these particular fossils, were formed in the course of the New-Life Period, it follows that the Alps, and the Pyrenees, and parts of the other ranges, just men- tioned, were not mountains at all until after the beginning or middle of that Period. And this is supposed to have been really the case. The kingly Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa were probably buried under ocean-waters, and not uplifted as lofty moun- tains until towards the close of the Third Period. But how long were the ages which may have been occupied, first by the building of the coin-filled rock layers, and then by the grand upheaval of whole mountain-ranges, we cannot even guess. We do not know in the least how quickly the former The Age of Mammals. 179 may have taken place, or whether the latter was a gradual or a rapid work. It should be understood that these stone coins and other sea-fossils are not merely found scattered over the surfaces of great heights, but are buried deep down in the solid rocks. The climate of the earth in Third-Period Days seems generally to have been mild, much milder than now. Tropical plants grew on European earth, and tropical animals wandered through European forests; while plants which now flourish in temper- ate lands then flourished within the Arctic circle. Towards the close of the Tertiary a change becomes visible; showing a gradual increase of cold in the hitherto warm waters and soft atmos- phere of England and middle Europe. The Third Period seems to have been possibly ushered in by a cold era; and it seems to have almost certainly gone out in a cold era. But the chief part of it, not counting the beginning or the ending, appears to have been warm. As in other ages, there was most likely much gradual building of sediment beds, sandy or clayey, or muddy, in Europe and America, with frequent ris- ing and sinking of land in different parts. The con- 180 The World's Foundations. tinents would by this time have had their general outlines much the same as at present, though broad reaches which are now dry land must then have lain under the sea for at least a part of the Period. Rocks of this Period are to be seen in the neigh- borhood of London and Paris, among many places. The "London Basin" and the "Paris Basin" are terms often used; the "Basin" being in fact a large hollow in rocks of the Chalk Age, which hollow has been filled up with later-built layers of Third-Period sand, clay, gravel and other materials, containing ample fossil remains. The "Paris Basin" is about one hundred and eighty miles long and ninety miles broad. The British Isles like other lands, are believed to have slowly risen and sunk alternately through many ages. At one time the whole was probably part of the Continent; then again it sank, and became a mere little archipelago of small islands; again it rose, and Ireland was separated from Eng- land, and the Dover Straits flowed between England and France. In early New-Life ages England was probably part of the Continent, since all the great European beasts found their way across into Brit- ain; but the final separation probably took place towards the close of the Period. CHAPTER XIX. MORE ABOUT THE AGE OF MAMMALS. " Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created; and Thou renewest the face of the earth." PSA. civ. 30. SOME few signs are seen in early Third-Period rocks, which may point to the existence of ice- bergs floating southward, but the general evidence throughout the greater part of the Period seems to tell of a mild climate. Towards the close, however, a marked change becomes visible. Rough "drift "or " till" polished stones, scratched rocks, big blocks of stone carried far from their places, coarse clay, these and other tokens found in the upper layers speak to us of a colder time coming on. Just as the First Period was the Age of Lower Animals and Fishes; as the Second Period was the 1 82 The World's Foundations. Age of Reptiles; so the Third Period was the Age of Mammals. Mammals have been already described as the very highest class in the upper division of the Ani- mal Kingdom. They have a backbone and skele- ton; so have fishes. They breathe air; so do reptiles. They are warm-blooded; so are birds. They suckle their young; and so do not any other living crea- tures. This is the mark of uppermost rank. The mammals, or the animals of highest rank, were the latest created. The Tertiary or Third Period is sometimes spoken of as ending before the Post-Tertiary or After-Ter- tiary, and sometimes it is made to include the Post-Tertiary. In the former case it is the Age of Mammals, because mammals first flourished dur- ing its three ages. In the latter case it is still more strongly the Age of Mammals, for in the Post- Tertiary these animals reached their greatest size and power. Moreover, Man was created in the Post-Tertiary, and Man is a Mammal. In this chapter, however, we are thinking about the Third Period, apart from the After-Third Period. During the earlier part of the Third Period am- monites, as well as coin-like nummulites, lived over the submerged Alpine peaks but they were the last More about the Age of Mammals. 183 of their kind. Coral-polyps too worked there, show- ing a warm sea. The fig-tree and the cinnamon grew wild in the Isle of Wight; and palm-trees, of a kind now seen in Bengal, grew in the Island of Sheppey; and the cocoa-nut and the custard-apple grew near London. These facts are known by the fossil leaves and fruits or seeds found in the rocks of the different places. It would hardly be believed, without being seen, how perfect and delicate is the way in which some of these fossils are kept. A fossil butterfly was found in Croatia, the very pattern of the wing being exactly depicted on the stone. Thus it is that botanists can tell the trees or plants to which fossil leaves and stems and seeds probably belonged. In England there were crocodiles, also sea-snakes up to twenty feet in length, besides tortoises, tur- tles and other animals. A bird found in the Lon- don clay had notches in its bill, to which some rather imaginative naturalist gave the name of "teeth." In the forests of France there were parrots and flamingoes, cranes and adjntants, pelicans and secretary-birds such as are now brought from Africa and other hot countries to put into Zoo- 184 The World's Foundations. logical Gardens. A kind of ostrich too seems to have lived there. In the Rocky Mountain region where the break between Second-Period and Third-Period Rocks is not seen, but where one age seems to have glided gently into the next, the marked change visible elsewhere in kinds of animal-life does not exist. Chalk- Age animals, chiefly reptiles and not mam- mals, continue; so it is really very difficult to say where the rocks of the Chalk-Age end and the rocks of the Recent-Life Period begin. But in other parts of North America and in Europe, alongside with the birds and the few reptiles above-mentioned, mammals flourished in great abundance. Many of them were strange creatures, utterly unlike any that live now. Oth- ers resembled more or less modern quadrupeds, though they were never exactly the same. One of these brutes, the remains of which are often found, has a name given to it which means "Ancient Wild-beast."* It was something like the modern long-nosed tapir; the larger speci- mens being as large as a horse, and the smaller as small as a sheep. There were many different kind? of tapir-like animals in Europe then. Paleothere. More about the Age of Mammals. 185 Another strange creature* was rather slender and graceful in form, and about the size of a chamois. There were dogs, weasels, opossums, and numer- ous other quadrupeds in Europe; some of them known to us by their skeletons, and some only by their footprints. So numerous, indeed, are the kinds of footprints, that we may learn from them a useful lesson, as to the variety of animals which may have lived in any age, quite unknown to us by fossil remains. A large whale-like animal t seems to have been abundant in America that is to say, in the seas overflowing what is now American land. The backbone is from fifty to seventy feet long. In one part the remains of no less than forty of these ancient whales were found within ten miles of one another. Whales and dolphins are mam- mals, not fishes, since they are warm-blooded, and breathe air, and suckle their young. The European plants and trees of the early part of this Period seem to have been generally much the same in character as Australian trees and plants of the present day; but later on in the Xiphodon. t Zeuglodon. 1 86 The World's Foundations. Period they appear rather to have resembled the modern growth of North America. In middle Europe palms grew plentifully as far north as 50 degrees North Latitude. There palms ceased, but their companions are found in much higher latitudes. In the Valley of the Rhine there were oaks and poplars, maples and planes, and a kind of North American vine. In North Greenland, now a region of perpetual ice and snow, the wellingtonia flourished side by side with the poplar and the willow, the oak and the beech, the plane and the walnut. In Spitzbergen, where now only a few stunted shrubs and certain lichens find subsistence, the beech and the poplar, the plane and the lime, the alder and the hazel grew. The uplifting of the Alpine mountains and other great ranges is believed to have taken place some- where about the middle of the Period. Remains are found in France and in England of huge quadrupeds, though not yet so huge as those in the Post-Tertiary Age. There were the rhinoc- eros, and the hippopotamus; also the mastodon, a very large and massive kind of ancient elephant; also a singular kind of elephantine-hippopotamus- More about the Age of Mammals. 187 tapir;* also many other different kinds of big tapir- like beasts; also stags and antelopes, giraffes and camels, monkeys and crocodiles, whales and dol- phins. All these flourished on land or in water during the middle part of the Third Period in Britain and France, as well as in other parts of Europe and in America. One gigantic extinct tortoise of those days is described as having been not less than eighteen feet long the animal, not the shell only and as standing seven feet high. But though some great reptiles lived still, yet their Day was over. In the latter part of the Period, as already said, marks are seen of a change in the climate. Semi- tropical plants in Europe gradually give place to those which tell of a colder atmosphere. Also, if the rocks containing fossil-shells are examined for instance, those of the Crag in Norfolk this gradual change is distinctly visible in passing from layer to layer upwards: the kinds which live in warm waters yielding, step by step, to those which live in frigid waters. The mammals, however, con- tinue much the same as earlier. In a certain buried forest, near Cromer, once dry * Dinothere. 1 88 The World's Foundations. land, though now only visible on the shore at very low tide, the remains of many creatures are found amid the remains of tree-trunks such as the ele- phant, the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, the deer, and smaller animals. The mastodon is not dis- covered there, though its bones lie elsewhere in English rocks of that date. On the European and American continents, the record still tells us of the ancient whale,* and of a kind of rhinocerosf as big as an elephant, with huge horns. Also, there were horses, somewhat like those of modern days, only one kind was as small as a fox; and all kinds seem to have had feet with more or less distinct toes, instead of the single hoof of the modern horse. Also, there were masto- dons, elephants, tigers, wolves, deer, foxes, porcu- pines, ant-eaters, monkeys, and many other kinds. All these ranged the earth late in the Third Period; but not one of them was exactly the same as any kind living now; and, among them all are to be found no signs of ox or cow. * Zeuglodon. \ Dinocere. CHAPTER XX. THE AGE OF ICE. 'How great are His signs! and how mighty are His wonders!" DAN. iv. 3. WE have now reached comparatively modern days in this strange old-world history; and it may seem as if the task of writing about those days ought to be easier than the task of writing about more dis- tant ages yet, in reality, it is not so. The dim" culties increase with the increased nearness of the time. This is not hard to understand. If you are look- ing at some object in the far distance, its outline is simple. You may be puzzled to decide exactly what that object is, but the little you can say about it is easily stated. If, on the contrary, you have to describe scenery near at hand, the very fulness of details makes it more difficult to give a clear description. icp The World's Foundations. The same is found in the history of men. In telling a tale of ancient days, much may seem dim and doubtful; but the whole of your knowledge concerning the events in question, whether certain or uncertain knowledge, may be summed up in a few clear sentences. But try to write a history of the days of George III., and the very abundance of facts, the complexity of accounts, the warmth of feelings involved, will add a thousandfold to your difficulties. So it is in Geology. The nearer we approach to present days, the greater becomes the number of facts and of theories, and the more difficult it is to put all that has to be said into one or two brief chapters. All fossil-shells found in the rocks, belonging to the first half of the Post-Tertiary Age, are the same in kind as those now living; but most of the mammals have died out, or have given place to new kinds, very much like, yet not quite like, them- selves. Throughout the last half of the Post-Tertiary Age, commonly known as the Recent Age, not only shells, but in a great measure the quadrupeds too, agree with those now in the world. The Age of Ice. 191 The Post-Tertiary Age seems to have come upon the earth in the shape of an intensely cold period the great Ice-Age of Geology. I have already mentioned the signs in certain later Third-Period rocks of a change of climate warm-water shells giving place to Arctic shells, and semi-tropical plants to those of more northern latitudes. This increase of cold towards the close of the Third Period, seems in the beginning of the follow- ing Age to have reached a climax of wide-spread and long-continued and very severe frost over the temperate latitudes. An account was given in the eighth chapter of the Drift, or Till, or Boulder Clay different names for the particular soil which is believed to bear the marks of a past mighty Ice-Age. The scratched stones, the scored and polished rocks, the heaped- up old moraines or what appear to be such, the huge erratic blocks scattered through different coun- tries and seemingly brought from a distance, the tough clay filled with sharp-edged stones all these are there described. More than once in the course of this old-world rock-history, mention has been made of stones and blocks here or there, which may possibly have been 1 92 The World's Foundations. dropped by floating icebergs upon the half-built strata though it is quite as likely that some, at least, of them were carried out to sea, entangled in the roots of floating tree-trunks, or borne on a floating island, and thus dropped. In those earlier cases the evidence of plants and animals living at the time, points almost without exception to a mild climate. But in the great Ice-Age, of which we hear so much, stone-markings, blocks, plants and shells, all unite to tell the same tale of intense and long- continued cold. The great Ice-Age is commonly believed to have taken place somewhere near the beginning of the Post-Tertiary Age. Of course this does not fix it at any particular date. In geological history we cannot count by years and centuries, and every attempt to do so sooner or later breaks down. We are only able to count by "Periods" and "Ages," each "Period" and "Age" being of unknown length. Some geologists have supposed that the Ice-Age may have taken place many hundreds of thousands of years ago, while others suppose it to have been comparatively quite near to modern times. No one can tell which really was the case. The Age of Ice. 193 We know so much as this, that in the strata commonly called Post-Tertiary some of the latest formed, and in fact the top-story of the great earth- crust building there are certain signs difficult to explain. Signs, such as tough clay, filled with jumbled stones of all shapes; such as scratched and polished rock-surfaces, and scratched and pol- ished stones; such as great jagged rock-masses on mountain-tops, brought from far-off heights. No theories of rushing water or stormy waves are suf- ficient to explain these appearances. Therefore it is that the belief has sprung into being of enormous and wide -spreading glaciers. For this same work of polishing, scoring and carry- ing, which we count glaciers to have accomplished in the past, they are seen to be daily doing in the present. It seems a tremendous supposition that, after the prolonged ages already described of soft and warm climates over all the earth, even within the Arctic circle, there should have come a period of such amazing cold, as to bury Canada and a great part of the United States, Scotland, Switzerland, and a great part of France and England, under enor- mous glaciers, branching in all directions, spread- ing through thousands of miles, covering all lower 194 The World's Foundations. heights, and reaching two or three thousand feet up the sides of mountains. But on the other hand, although tremendous, it is not impossible. " Noth- ing is impossible " with God. And as at present we know of no other possible cause for these strange facts and appearances, the glacier explanation is accepted as in all probability true. Another thing that we do not know is how this great change in the climate of Earth came about. By "how it came" I am not questioning the fact that it came straight from God. But it is usually His will to work by means; and what means He employed to bring about the change we cannot tell. Many guesses have been made, some ingen- ious ones among them; but none yet which can be honestly and fairly accepted as entirely satisfactory. It was rather a perplexity in connection with this cold period, that though the shells and plants and ice-marks tell of a frigid climate, yet the bones of elephants and rhinoceroses are found as at that time living in England. The elephant and rhi- noceros are not usually inhabitants of very cold countries. The difficulty has been met in more ways than one. Sometimes, it is said, these creatures, though living in warm lands, are tound to wander to the The Age of Ice. 195 neighborhood of frost and snow, as, for instance, when a Bengal tiger was found amid the snows of the Himalayas. This very rare event, however, would hardly serve to explain the abundance of huge quadrupeds in England through those days. Again, it has been suggested that regular sum- mer and winter migrations may have taken place then with elephants and rhinoceroses, as now with swallows. The supposition seems a very improb- able one. Again, some of the huge quadrupeds of those times are known to have had a warm covering of hair and wool, which would have fitted them to stand severe cold. As we usually know them only by their skeletons and footprints, the instances are few in which we can learn anything about their skins. Warm woolly coats may have grown upon them, when rendered needful by increase of cold, as we now see with animals inhabiting Arctic regions. Following after the Ice-Age, we find signs of great floods in many different places. It is not impossible that these floods were caused by the rapid melting of the mighty glaciers which so long had overspread the lands. Here again, as before, the thought of the Flood 196 The World's Foundations. in the days of Noah rises to mind. Whether that Flood and these floods of which the rocks tell us were the same, or whether as some think they were separated by a wide interval of time, it is not possible to decide. We know nothing as to the date of the Geological floods. But in either case, it should ever be remembered that such tremen- dous rushes of water over the surface of the earth must have worked many a change in the upper rock-layers, and have added fifty-fold to the diffi- culty of rightly reading the latest-written chapter in the Geological volume. During the flood-time, after the Ice-Age, there was probably much active work done, in the way of cutting out valleys, and carving deep ravines. Much, though not all, of this has been the work of running water. A stream of water may flow long over a nearly level plain and do small damage, but if rushing down a steep hill-side it will tear away earth, and wear away rocks with great rapid- ity, deepening its channel, and cutting its path visibly lower from year to year. Sometimes this time of floods, or a time following soon after, is called the Terrace Period. In a water-course, the old levels of the stream those heights at which it ran in bygone days, before it The Age of Ice. 197 had cut its way down to its present level are often to be seen as terrace above terrace, or shelf above shelf, on either bank. The highest terrace or shelf is the oldest level, the next lower the next oldest, and so on. After the floods, a time is supposed to have suc- ceeded of quiet earth and sand deposits in tranquil waters. The uppermost sandy and earthy layers, those which have been spread over the lands by overflow- ing waters in latest times of all, are commonly spoken of as "alluvium." This is taken from a Latin word, meaning "an inundation." England, in the days following after the Third Period, was indeed a different country from Eng- land of the present. It is true she was no longer inhabited by bird- reptiles and flying dragons; yet her inhabitants were scarcely less startling, though perhaps less grotesque. Enormous elephants, almost twice the size of modern ones, roamed through her forests; and huge two-horned rhinoceroses, kept the elephants company; and great tusked hippopotamuses wal- lowed in her swamps; while gigantic lions and 198 The World's Foundations. tigers disputed the palm with the bigger beasts; and leopards and wolves, deer and wild horses, bears, wild cats, and countless savage hyaenas, to- gether with many lesser quadrupeds, roved in her woods, skulked in her caves, fought, fled, and de- voured one another. Their bones are found in abundance in the Post-Tertiary rocks of England. The principal British elephant was the Mammoth, and his wanderings extend throughout the whole of Northern Europe and Siberia. Thousands of mammoth grinders, or teeth, are found in England, and thousands of mammoth tusks lie in Siberian soil. This great creature was commonly about twice as heavy as a modern elephant, and one- third as tall again. A whole frozen mammoth was found in Siberia a rare geological specimen ! Even the flesh had been preserved; and when the enormous body was released from its ice-sepulchre, the bears and wolves ate it up. This particular mammoth was nine feet high and sixteen feet long, not counting the great curved tusks. It was covered with thick black bristles, about fourteen inches long, with thick hair four inches long, and with wool about one inch long. Such a coat might ingeneral well fit the elephant for an Ice- Age, though even it seems The Age of Ice. 199 not to have sufficed for the defence of the mammoth in question from Siberian frost. How long he had lain in his ice-tomb no man can say. The "very fresh" condition of the flesh and of the whole carcase, would incline one to think that the time could scarcely be so long as some suppose. Also, how he met his death we know not. The frost must indeed have seized with a sudden and mastering grasp upon his huge frame, thus perfectly to preserve it for later inspection. Besides the Mammoth, the Woolly Rhinoceros flourished in Europe another instance of a usually tropic animal fitted to bear Arctic cold. The car- case of one has been found in France. In North America the quadrupeds were as a rule less large than in Europe; yet the other continent had its fair share of big brutes. Mastodon remains are found in America as well as in Britain and other parts of Europe. This enor- mous animal was, again, a kind of elephant, pecu- liarly colossal and powerful in build. A mastodon skeleton may be seen in the Natural History Muse- um.* Another found in America, is eleven feet high, with tusks twelve feet long. * South Kensington. 2OO The World 's Foundations, There was also a huge brute,* somewhat ap- proaching the modern sloth in kind a tremendous massive slow creature, bigger than a rhinoceros. One such skeleton is eighteen feet long. Megatherium. CHAPTER XXI. THE AGE OF MAN. " I have made the Earth, and created Man upon it." ISA. xlv. 12. AMONG the uppermost animal-remains in the up- permost strata of the great Earth-crust Building, we meet at last with the remains of Man. Head of the Animal Kingdom, noblest of God's works, himself a Mammal, yet utterly superior to and separate from the whole brute creation, MAN crowns the ascending steps of the scale of life upon Earth. We have now at length reached a time which is but as yesterday compared with the Ages before. Different kinds of human relics are found, such as sometimes a human skeleton or a human bone; sometimes a bit of human workmanship; sometimes long-disused human dwellings; sometimes human tools of a more or less rough and early type. The latter sign of man's life upon earth in any particular place should, however, be accepted with 2O2 The World's Foundations. exceeding caution. The roughest and earliest flint tools of human workmanship approach so closely to the roughly chipped flints of Nature's workmanship, which exist by tens of thousands, that the one may often be mistaken for the other; and many so-called " tools" have proved, or may yet prove, to be noth- ing of the kind. In the course of long searching into such human remains as are to be found in the uppermost rocks, certain curious facts have been observed. It is found that in each nation, as a rule, the ear- liest inhabitants, who were generally savages, or who were at least untaught and uncivilized, have made use of the simplest material lying ready to their hands, this material being stone. Later on they have begun to find out the uses of metal, and have learnt to fashion some sort of rough bronze weapons and implements. Later on still they have discovered the uses of iron. The order of events has not, of course, been the same in every nation in the world. Still this par- ticular order has been so often noticed, that the life of Man upon earth has been by common consent divided into three ages The Stone -Age, the Bronze-Age, and the Iron-Age. The Age of Man. 203 It must not be supposed that at any one time a Stone-Age was over all the earth, followed by an universal Bronze-Age, and then by an universal Iron-Age. Some countries which were very early peopled have left their Stone and Bronze Ages behind them long long ago, while others, more lately peopled have not yet reached the Iron-Age. We in England are living in a decidedly Iron- Age, having left far behind us our Stone and Bronze Ages. But a great many of the natives of the South Sea Islands, and of Central Africa, are still living in their Stone or Bronze Ages, and have no notion yet of the Iron. Again, the Stone and Bronze Ages in different parts of North America lasted up to some two hundred years ago, and then by a quick transition she passed rapidly on into an Iron- Age. So the inhabitants of many countries travel through these stages, but not the inhabitants of all countries side by side. Each country has its Historical Period, and its Pre-Historical Period, and its Geological Period. About the Historical Period we have more or less clear accounts handed down in writing from genera- tion to generation. Sometimes we have the full history of a country from the time when it was first 2O4 The World's Foundations. peopled; but more often the Pre-Historical Period means a time when men lived there, but about which little or no history has come down to us. Sometimes geology can take up the thread where history fails, and can give us dimly a few scattered facts as to the life of man in a country before his- toric times. As we go back in English History, we have tolerably clear light until we reach Saxon days. Then, as we pass on, a kind of morning twilight remains through a few hundred years, till we reach the days of Julius Caesar. A little way further still we may grope our way in a dusky atmosphere, but soon all surrounding scenery is lost in black night, and written records fail. A few fitful legends, like the dancing ignis fatuus, rather help to lead us astray than to light us onward, and presently even these fail. Then it is, if not sooner, that we reach the Pre-Historical Period; and then it is that geol- ogy steps in and gives us a few hints as to a pos- sible Stone-Age before. Scottish history is lost in fog and darkness rather earlier, while in French history the light lasts a little longer. In Grecian history you may wander onward for a considerable distance further before night shrouds the landscape. The Age of Man. 205 So there is a great difference between the nations. The historic period of the United States is but a thing of yesterday, compared with the historic peri- od of Great Britain. The historic period of Great Britain is but a thing of yesterday, compared with the historic period of Egypt or of Assyria. In each of these different instances, where history fails, geology may take up the thread and tell us a little, a very little, about the age preceding. But all dates are in confusion and uncertainty where we have only the geological volume to depend upon. One singular fact as to human remains is that they are actually found, in England and France, side by side with the bones of the mastodon, the cave-bear, the ancient hyaena, and other animals now no longer seen. It is not safe to build too much upon this fact. As before stated, the upper layers of earth and rock may have been in many places so changed and dis- turbed by the action of great floods in later times, as very much to affect our power of rightly reading them. Still, the impression given by these bones being found together naturally is that the animals and men to which they belonged probably lived at about the same time. 206 The World's Foundations. There are caves in the south of England and in the south of France where very large numbers of bones have been discovered, not lying on the ground, but buried a little way below ground. Bones of hyaenas, wolves, and bears are found in profusion; and in very rare instances, quite near the surface, a human bone, or even a human skeleton is discovered among them. It is not an absolute certainty, because a human bone is seen there that the human being lived alongside with the other animals whose bones are in the same cave and at the same depth in the soil. Some who have carefully examined these caves be- lieve it possible, from the singular manner in which the bones are mixed up and rolled together, that a strong flood may have poured through the cave, washing earth, and perhaps bones also, in from out- side, and destroying all regularity of arrangement. Whether or no this was the case, the bare idea shows how little we can build upon appearances without further knowledge. But suppose that when such further knowledge is obtained, we find stronger and stronger proof of men having really lived alongside with certain extinct animals ? Why not ? We do not know at what date any one The Age of Man. 207 species of any one kind of animal did really die out. We only know that they do not exist now, and that above certain rock-layers we have not yet alighted upon their remains. But any one kind of animal may have existed still, though in lessening numbers, long after the particular age of the last fossil or bone of that particular kind found by man. Many specimens of these creatures may have lingered on past the time of Adam or into the times of the Patriarchs. Some have thought Job's description of Behemoth wonderfully suited to the huge mastodon far more so than to the modern elephant; and Job is believed to have lived in a very early age of the history of man. Moreover it is well known that animals have died out of existence in a much shorter period than since the days of the Patriarchs. The Dodo, a large bird, which in the seventeenth century was very plenti- ful in the islands of the Indian Ocean, has since become entirely extinct, not one solitary specimen remaining. This is but one instance among several. Sometimes the Stone-Age is divided into three parts. The middle one of these, the Reindeer Era, is supposed to have been a second Ice-Age, a return of cold, severe, though less intense than 2o8 The World's Foundations. the cold of the great Ice- Age, taking place after a period of comparative mildness. All these later sub-divisions are, however, very uncertain. Different books give them differently, and the same plans or rules cannot be applied to all countries alike. The whole may have to be rearranged before many years are over, as ad- vance is made in knowledge. Exceeding caution in decision, and patient willingness to wait for further information, are of the utmost importance in this science, even more than in other sciences, to keep us from falling into grave blunders, and *- o-nard our feet from dangerous quagmires. CHAPTER XXII. THE TWO RECORDS. ' Lo, He that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and de- clared unto man what is His thought, that maketh the morning dark- ness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, The Lord, the God of Hosts, is His Name." AMOS iv. 13. A FEW more words, and the Second Part of my little book will be ended. This is not a strictly religious work, but no vol- ume on the subject of Geology can be fairly and honestly written without frequent reference to the Divine Architect of the great Earth-crust Building. Some slight mention has already been made of the first chapter in Genesis, and the Days or Ages of Creation there described. To reconcile each separate detail as given in the Book of Divine Revelation and as given in the Book of Nature, is a matter not yet possible with our pre- sent imperfect knowledge. Many explanations have indeed been offered of 2IO The World's Foundations. the Bible record of Creation, in connection with late scientific discoveries; and many attempts have been made to dovetail the one account in with the other. Any one of these may approach more or less closely to the true explanation, though in each some flaw may be discernible. But what then? What if all explanations hith- erto offered are more or less mistaken? What if the true clue to the perplexity, the real point of harmony, lies at so lofty a height as to be beyond the utmost stretch of human intellect ? Then be it so. The grand Truth of either record remains still unshaken. For we must ever remember that these two rec- ords, the story told in Genesis and the story told in the Earth-crust, proceed both from the same Divine Author. They do but give different views of the same grand realities. Though our reading of the one may seem to conflict with our reading of the other, they cannot be in themselves at variance. Moreover, the one Record may and should be used as a help to the understanding of the other. If certain new discoveries prove beyond a doubt that the commonly-received interpretation of cer- tain Bible-words is wrong, then that interpretation may be given up, but the truth of the written Word The Two Records. 211 stands untouched. There should, however, be the utmost caution shown in accepting new theories and explanations. Many, if left alone, soon die a nat- ural death. Many questions must remain for a while longer in uncertainty, and we must be content to have it so, knowing our own liability to misread and misinterpret both the Written Volume and the Rock-Record. With regard to the Bible-Record of Creation, a few brief suggestions may be a help to some minds. We do not know how far the inspired writer was led to give a narrative of events in the precise order in which they actually occurred. A certain group- ing of leading events, for the sake of brevity, within the limits of exact truth, is sometimes adopted in very short narratives. The writer appears here, as he passes rapidly on, to seize in each Day upon one or two leading points of interest the prominent facts of the period. Many lesser points of interest and minor facts doubtless existed alongside; but with these he is not concerned. He gives the names of the topmost mountain-peaks in the scen- ery, and attempts no description of lower heights. We do not know how far his language is literal and how far it is figurative. Both styles are largely used in the Bible. 212 The World's Foundations. We do not know whether that which he describes was told him in words, or was revealed to him in vision; and if the latter, whether it was by one vision or by a succession of visions. We do not know how far he was led to describe things simply as they would have appeared to an observer, standing on the unfinished earth during the Creation-Days, a style not unfrequently em- ployed in the Bible. This would tend to explain certain difficulties, such as the mention of light on the First Day, but of the sun and moon not sooner than the Fourth Day. We do not know whether, as some think, the Days may mean vast periods or ages of time, or whether, as others think, they may rather refer to an appearance of days and nights, caused by a suc- cession of visions sent to Moses, each in turn dawn- ing, brightening, and vanishing in darkness. It has been the opinion of many that between the first and second verses in Genesis a vast inter- val of time is, or may be, passed over. Some have even held that the countless ages of Geologic history may have been contained in that interval, followed by universal destruction of life, by a period of chaos, and by Days of new creation. Others again have been struck with certain broad The Two Records. 213 outlines of remarkable agreement in the Days and the Ages of the two Records: first, as to the grad- ual preparation of the earth; secondly, as to the gradual development of life upon earth, proceeding upwards step by step from lower to higher forms.* The above are some among the many sugges- tions offered by different writers. We shall be wise to hold our thoughts free, and to wait for fuller knowledge of the deep meanings underlying the brief Bible narrative. When both records are fully understood, we shall be amazed at the majestic completeness of the two combined, at the won- drous simplicity of that which now seems to us complex and mysterious. By-and-by we shall have power to grasp the whole. At present we know only that "HE SPAKE, AND IT WAS DONE; HE COMMANDED, AND IT STOOD FAST." * One hint may be offered here with regard to the creation of " great whales," spoken of in Gen. i. 21, as preceding the creation of Mammals, which was in turn followed by the creation of Man. The Hebrew word there translated "Whales," and elsewhere translated "Dragons" (see Psa. Ixxiv. 13; xci. 13; cxlviii. 7, etc.), is derived from the verb tanan, to extend, and may signify any long sea or land animals, serpents, croco- diles, etc., as much as whales. Also the Greek word, "nrjTrj y used in the Septuagint translation of the same, does not necessarily mean whales only, but any huge sea-monsters. A recollection of the Age of Reptiles naturally occurs to mind. 214 The World's Foundations. A more easy task lies before us in the third and last section of this little book. We have learnt, first, the simple alphabet of Geology. We have read, secondly, a brief sketch of the history written in earth's rocks. We have to gather, thirdly, from the events going on daily around us and in all parts of the world, certain facts which may help us to a better understanding of the great Rock His- tory to view, as it were, the Past in the light of the Present. For though we may in a sense talk of the Earth- Crust Building as finished the lower, middle, and upper stories all complete yet it is so only in a sense. Still the same busy workers are ceaselessly employed, ever pulling down and building up, ever making alterations, ever taking away here and add- ing there. Much more attention has thus far been given to the working of the great agent, Water, than to the working of the great fellow-agent, Fire. This could hardly be otherwise, since it is in the Water-made rocks, and not in the Fire-made rocks, that we find the written record of the life of plants and animals upon earth. The fact should not, however, be lost sight of that, side by side with the writing of the life-record The Two Records. 215 in the water-built rocks, the formation of fire-made rocks was going on in different places. There are such rocks, sometimes arranged in layers and some- times not, believed to belong to each different pe- riod in Geology. But it is much more difficult to fix the comparative ages of fire-made than of water- made rocks. By their " ages," I mean ages counted in periods, not in centuries. In the Third Part, somewhat fuller attention will be given to the working of the mighty underground agent, Fire, though want of space will forbid full details on any subject. A word of caution is perhaps advisable at the outset. We may fairly and rightly examine the working of the different forces as seen in the present day, and may learn much from that working about their action in past ages. But there is a danger lest this mode of reasoning be pushed too far. There have been men of powerful intellect who, long and earnestly studying thus, have arrived at the belief, that precisely as these powers are now observed to work, so they always have worked through countless ages past. In other words, they hold that throughout the vast periods of Geological 216 The World's Foundations. history, rocks have never been more rapidly wasted, river-deltas have never been more rapidly formed, coral, chalk and limestone have never been more rapidly made, earthquakes have never been might- ier, land has never risen or sunk more extensively and rapidly, than the speed with which these things have been known to take place within the last few hundred years. That such has been the case we can, to say the least, possess no certainty. The fact that a par- ticular thing has existed under particular conditions during so many hundreds or thousands of years, affords no proof whatever that it so existed during preceding ages. The one does not follow as a necessity upon the other. We may guess, may suppose, may imagine, but we cannot KNOW it to have been thus. We see about us certain powers incessantly at work. Water wears away land. Fiery heat surges underground. Coral islands and reefs are slowly built. Limestone is gradually formed. These things go on now, and these things have gone on in the past. It is, however, no easy matter to say how fast they go on now, since the rate of waste, or of growth, or of change, is seldom the same in two places. And even if we could fix on any particular The Two Records. 217 rate for each, as generally not far wrong in the present, that would be no sure guide as to the past. Differing circumstances in the way of climate, at- mosphere, land, ocean-currents, underground forces, may each or all have affected in a marked degree the speed of alterations on the earth's surface through earlier times. For after all, when we talk of judging the past from the present, what is that "present?" The life of man upon earth is but a thing of yesterday, compared with the ages preceding. What do we know of the mighty changes, the vast upheavals, the great dislocations, the tremendous destructions of life, the wondrous times of renewal, which may have taken place ay, and may equally have taken place either slowly or rapidly, gradually or sud- denly ? God may have had His very different modes of working in different periods, whether known or unknown to us. Even supposing that the forces of Nature may have continued the same in intensity during hun- dreds of thousands of years past a question which cannot be decided with certainty is it conceivable that they should have been the same in yet earlier ages, before the earth had parted with its heat so far as it has since done ? 218 The World's Foundations. For there was a time, as we believe, when our earth was a sun small indeed compared with the great central orb of our system, yet a true burning sun, a tiny star shining by its own light. Looking back to that far-off time, remembering the count- less ages between, and the mighty changes involved, this "uniformity theory," as it is called, seems a thing incredible. Thus, here, as in other matters, it befits us to be cautious, to be humble, to be content to await fuller knowledge. On the page following will be found a list of the Geological Periods and Ages, somewhat more full than the short Table of Strata already given.* It should perhaps be mentioned that the distinction between Periods and Ages, kept up generally for the sake of clearness throughout this volume, is not observed as a constant rule by writers on Geol- ogy. The two terms are often used interchange- ably, not to say confusedly. * Page 59- The Two Records. 219 THE AGES OF GEOLOGY. I. PRIMARY (FIRST) PERIOD; OR PALEOZOIC (ANCIENT -LIFE) PERIOD. 1. LAURENTIAN AGE ; so named from rocks found near the River Lawrence. First and Simplest Forms of Animal Life. 2. CAMBRIAN AGE ; so named from rocks found in Wales; sometimes counted as part of the Si- lurian. Age of Invertebrates, or Boneless Lower Ani- mals. 3. SILURIAN AGE ; so named from Silures, ancient name for a tribe in Wales, where these rocks also are found. Age of Invertebrates, or Boneless Lower Ani- mals, continued. 4. DEVONIAN AGE ; also known in part as Old Red Sandstone. Called Devonian because largely visible in Devonshire. Age of Fishes, or First Backboned Animals. 220 The World's Foundations. 5. CARBONIFEROUS AGE ; rocks found in England, France, America, and elsewhere. Age of Coal, Age of Ancient Forests, and Age of Amphibians. 6. PERMIAN AGE ; so named from Perm, a Russian province, where these rocks are found ; some- times classed as one with, and sometimes as following after, the Carboniferous Age. Close of the Forest Age. II. SECONDARY (SECOND) PERIOD; OR MESOZOIC (MIDDLE-LIFE) PERIOD. r. TRIASSIC AGE ; so named by German writers, because in Germany these rocks are divided into a Triple group. Age of Reptiles. 2. JURASSIC AGE ; so named from the Jura Moun- tains, where these rocks are visible. Age of Reptiles, continued. 3. CRETACEOUS AGE; so named from a Latin word, creta, chalk. Age of Chalk; also Later Age of Rhizopods ; also Age of Reptiles, continued ; also time of first appearance of Mammals and Flowering Plants. The Two Records. 221 III. TERTIARY (THIRD) PERIOD; OR CAINOZOIC (NEW-LIFE) PERIOD. 1. EOCENE AGE; from Greek words, 77035, dawn, and xaixos, new. Shells, very few of living species. Age of Mammals. 2. MIOCENE AGE; from jietov, less, and xatvos, new. Shells, less than half the number found, of living species. Age of Mammals, continued. 3. PLIOCENE AGE ; from ntetov, more, and xatvos, new. Shells, more than half the number found, of living species. Age of Mammals, continued. 4. PLEISTOCENE AGE; from nisidros, most, and xarxo?, new. Shells, the greater number found, of living species. Age of Mammals, continued. POST-TERTIARY AGE; sometimes included in the Tertiary, sometimes counted as following after. 1. Post-Pliocene : Age of Mammals, continued. 2. Recent: Age of Man. 222 The World's Foundations. In America this Post-Tertiary (or After-Third) is called the Quater- nary Age; and is divided into I. The Glacial Age, or Age of the Drift; II. The Champlain Age; divided again into Diluvian and Alluvian Epochs; HI. The Recent or Terrace Age; divided again into Reindeer and Modem Era. But these particular arrangements and subdivisions are arbitrary, and most remain subject to much future alteration. PART III. THE PAST IN THE LIGHT OF THE PRESENT, CHAPTER XXIII. RIVERS. "In Thine hand is power and might." I CHRON. xxix. 12. MUCH has been already said about the work per- formed in the world by running water. This work may be divided into three distinct parts. First, water wastes, breaks up, crumbles, or wears away land. Secondly, it carries the wasted material, whether rocks, stones, pebbles, sand, or soil, tow- ards the ocean. Thirdly, it drops or deposits that material on the sea-bottom. Most of the valleys, ravines, gorges, and clefts in the world have been more or less formed by the action of running water sometimes partly, some- times entirely. When you see a stream rushing swiftly down a mountain-side, you are inclined to think of that stream as a fixed part of the scenery at one time, 226 The World's Foundations. indeed, more full than at another time, but remain- ing through centuries the same. Yet this is far from being the case. The stream is busily engaged in cutting out for itself a path- way deeper and deeper into the earth or through the rock, whichever may form its bed. Each river, each stream, each brook in the world is doing this work. And very wonderful it is to see how the hardest rock is worn away by the soft water which runs perpetually over it. Water is made of the two gases, Oxygen and Hydrogen. Perfectly pure water would have little or no power in wearing away rock, but it almost always contains a certain amount of the powerful Carbonic Acid Gas. This gas, so needful to the structure of plants and animals, yet so fatal to ani- mal-life, has a singular power of eating away rock, and causing it to crumble beneath the flowing water. Water when warm dissolves hard substances much more rapidly than when cold. Warm water in a natural state is now only to be seen in certain places, but in the earlier ages of the world's history it may have been much more common. This is one of the "may-bes," which render utterly uncertain all attempted calculations of time in those early ages. Rivers. 227 The movements of stones and sand in running water help that water in its work. Every rock that grinds against another rock, every stone that is washed against the bank, every grain of sand that rubs in passing against a boulder, does its little share in the task of "wearing away." At the Linn of Quoich, which is part of the River Dee, a singular instance may be seen of the cutting and carving power of running water. A neat round hollow in the hard rock, close to the stream laid bare in dry seasons, but overflowed when the water is high has long existed, called in the neighborhood " The Earl of Mar's Punch- bowl." In past days this hollow was like a huge round cup in the rock, with a solid rock bottom. But the waters which first made the hole did not stop there. Still they went on washing round and round, car- rying pebbles round and round with them, and still the restless waters and the hard stones continued their "wearing away" work, till at last the bottom was quite gone, and now the former " bowl " is a deep round hole, with water filling it from below. It was probably begun, in the first instance, by the simple rocking to and fro of a boulder on the bed of the stream. A slight hollow being thus formed, 228 The World's Foundations. the water would soon take to a circular motion in the hollow, and the movement of stones with the water would gradually accomplish the rest. Such holes are sometimes called Pot-holes. There is a large one in America, named " The Basin," fif- teen feet deep and over twenty feet across. Some very large holes of this description may also be seen at Lucerne, displayed as " Glacier-holes," but more probably in the first instance fashioned by the action of running water and circling stones. A stream coursing quietly over an almost level plain has no great wasting power. It is when wa- ter descends a steep height that the work goes on most quickly. A waterfall, or a torrent on a moun- tain-side, cuts its way rapidly backwards. Sometimes a powerful mountain torrent may be seen rushing down a narrow gorge, with high rocky precipices rising steeply on either side. In such a case you may be pretty sure that, whether or no the work of gorge-forming began thus, the water has had a great deal to do with carrying it on. Once upon a time the stream probably ran much nearer to the tops of the cliffs than now, and level, but through centuries past it has been gradually eating its way down to its present level. The passage of the foaming Reuss through Rivers. 229 the rocky pass of St. Gotthard, in the neighbor- hood of the Pont du Diable, is a good example of this. It is probable, however, that most of the larger valleys have not been formed by the action of water alone, but in a greater or less degree by the effects of underground disturbances, through earthquakes or earth-splittings. Some instances of very rapid valley -forming through water-action have been seen. m On the Vispback, in 1857, a sudden landslip laid bare an underground spring of water, unknown be- fore to have been in existence. Henceforth a stream flowed down the mountain-side from the un- earthed spring, and this stream immediately began the work of cutting for itself a channel. In the course of three years it dug a "gully," as described by an eye-witness. Eight years later when the same eye-witness went to the spot, he found that the stream had deepened and widened the little gap to such a degree, that a vineyard, which before the opening out of the spring had been unbroken, was cut in sunder by a chasm over forty yards in width, and at its shallowest part some fifteen feet in depth. 230 The World's Foundations. It has been found in America that the levelling of ancient forests often results in new valleys being formed. Near Georgia a certain forest was thus cut down, uncovering the clay soil, which the heat of the sun thereupon cracked in many places. Some of the cracks were three feet deep. When the rains set in, a rush of water taking its course through the largest crack rapidly deepened it, and at one end steadily wore a way backwards. The crack grew into a chasm, widening, lengthening, and invad- ing the high-road which lay near at hand. In the course of twenty years this new little valley increased, till it measured three hundred yards in length, fifty-five feet in depth, and at its broadest one hundred and eighty feet in width. Another such gorge, twice as large, was made in Brazil in forty years. The material worn away in these cases was soft. Where solid rock is concerned the work is necessar- ily slower; yet even here the speed is often greater than one would expect. At the base of the volcano, Etna, there are vast quantities of lava, poured at one time and an- other out of the mountain. The lava from one great eruption flowed down into the valley of the River Simeto, filling up its channel for some distance, and Rivers. 231 passing in great masses to the other side. This particular outbreak is believed to have taken place in the year 1603. In the course of about two cen- turies the river cut for itself, through this lava a peculiarly hard and firm kind, a passage, from forty to fifty feet in depth, and in parts several hundred feet wide. The mighty Niagara Fall must have been for ages past slowly eating its way backwards in the rocks over which it flows; so that the spot where the fall now takes place is not the same spot where it used to take place. This is more or less what happens with all water-falls, and certainly not least so with the great falls of the Niagara. A good many attempts have been made to fix the rate at which the Niagara works its way backward. One supposes it to be at the speed of a foot each year, while another suggests that it may be only three feet in each century. But careful observation alone, through long periods, could supply us with any means of truly answering this question; and careful observation in such matters is but a thing of yesterday. Even if the present rate of wear were clearly known, this would form no safe guide as to the past. At every step in the path of the retreating flood the character of the materials 232 The World's Foundations. to be worn away must have varied, their hardness or softness greatly affecting the speed of their destruction. That this work does actually go on may, however, be plainly seen. Every year there are changes in the shape of the channel; and huge rock-fragments are being perpetually broken off and dashed into the foaming waters below. When speaking of the work of rivers in carv- ing out valleys, it should be borne in mind that a river acts in two ways. First, there is its regular daily work in its narrow channel, lasting usually all the year round. Secondly, there are the flood-times, when the river spreads over a much wider bed, and often does much damage. In England such floods, though injurious, are com- paratively quiet; but in some countries river- floods are sudden, widespread, and fearfully de- structive. A river may therefore be said to have two beds its narrow constant bed, and its wide occasional bed. The latter is called often an alluvial plain. When we talk of a river overflowing its banks, we really mean that it is running in its wide bed instead of its narrow one. Rivers. 233 The work of wasting and wearing away, which is done by rivers and torrents and cascades on a large scale, is done by every little brook and streamlet on a small scale. If rivers carve out valleys, brooks hollow out dells. The materials which are crum- bled away in the making of these valleys and dells, are borne seaward first carried by the brooks down to the rivers, and then carried by the rivers down to the ocean. The amount of land thus torn yearly from the continents is past calculation. CHAPTER XXIV. WATERS. "This great and wide sea." PSA. civ. 25. NOT rivers and streams alone do the work of wast- ing away land. Heavy rains, underground watei- flows, ocean-waves and tides and currents all take an active share in the same. Even in England long-continued rains may cause much material to be carried off witness the brown muddy streams seen to flow at such a time, the brown tint coming simply from the earth which the water is stealing from the land. But it is in foreign countries that the full effects of rain may be observed. At Chirapoonjee in Bengal, high up among the mountains, the rainfall is tremendous. Thirty inches have been known to fall in twenty-four hours, and through the whole year the amount is more than twenty times as much as that which falls in one Waters. 235 year in England. The deluge of water down the mountain-sides, during the rains, destroys vegeta- tion, bears away soil, and makes a wild waste of what might otherwise be a richly-wooded land. In another part, near the Sikkim Mountains, the downpour of water in the rainy season is such that rivers have been known to rise twelve feet in twelve hours. The rush of torrents, the sound of falling trees, the crash of boulders dashed one against an- other by stormy cataracts, are described as some- times continuing night and day unceasingly. The sudden and violent rains of the tropics thus tear away earth, and grind rocks and stones into powder, far more rapidly than the rains of temper- ate lands can do. There are streams and rivers underground as well as above ground. When such a stream breaks out of the side of a hill, we call it a "spring." Under- ground channels and caverns are hollowed out by the flowing waters, with the help of the Carbonic Acid Gas which they contain. All rain-water which does not run to the ocean through streams and rivers sinks into the ground, joins the waters there, and in time generally finds its way to the ocean. The direction taken by underground streams is 236 The World's Foundations. much affected by the kind of soil. Loose soft grav- elly or sandy soils allow water free passage, but tough clay or hard rock act as barriers. Sometimes a large reservoir of water will collect over one stratum of rock or clay and under another, unable to find an outlet. If the water has found its way there from a greater height, the pressure of other water trying to flow in from behind will make it ready to take advantage of any opening that may occur. In such cases as this wells are often made. Men bore down from above, lowering a slender tube as they bore, through several kinds of soils, till the said tube passes through the upper clay and reaches the imprisoned water. Instantly the water rushes up the tube, glad, as it were, to find an outlet. Wells formed thus are called " Artesian," be- cause the plan was first tried in Artois. They are often found useful in supplying water to a neigh- borhood, where the amount within reach would otherwise be scanty. It is impossible to tell, with exactness, where these reservoirs are without boring, and many at- tempts have therefore been made in vain. In other instances, however, the toil has been amply repaid. For the success of such a well, it is needful not Waters. 237 only that there should be the reservoir of impris- oned water, but also that the water should have flowed down from a higher level, the way by which it has come being still open. If you were to make your boring at the top of a hill, with no higher ground near, then, even though the tube should reach an underground reservoir, no water would rise since there would be no pressure of water behind to force it to do so. In a well bored at Tours, the rush of water was so great that it rose, like a fountain, to the height of thirty-two feet above ground. In another at Grenoble, none appeared till the tube had reached a depth of two thousand feet. Then it came in good earnest soft warm water, pouring steadily up from lower regions, at the rate of half a million gallons in each twenty-four hours. Such wells have sometimes been successful even in deserts. Occasionally the flow of water is found after a while to lessen, proving that the reservoir is not a very large one. All around the shores of the British Isles, not to speak of other lands, the ocean-waves are beating, beating perpetually, wearing away her cliffs, eating into her shores. 238 The World's Foundations. Just as, with the rivers, the chief waste is on the hill-sides, and not on level plains, so also with the sea. The waves have comparatively little power to wash away the soft flat sands. It is upon the bold cliffs not only cliffs of soft chalk, but of hard rock also that their power is chiefly shown. There is much less wear and tear on the Mediter- ranean coasts, where the tides are so slight as to be almost nothing, than on British shores, where the rise and fall of the tides are great. Yet, even in the Mediterranean the waters are doing their work, and every storm leaves its traces. In the Shetland Islands, exposed as they are to the full force of the broad Atlantic, the action of the waves is forcibly displayed in the fantastic rock- groupings, the caves and arches, the columns and pinnacles, the needles and obelisks, formed by the wear of the hard rocks under the incessant beating of the surges. Much the same may also be seen along parts of the exposed west coast of Scotland. At the Bell -Rock Lighthouse, the wonderful strength of ocean-waves is seen perhaps as clearly as anywhere. Stones over two tons in weight have often been flung upon the rock by the billows in their wild gambols. While the lighthouse was be- ing built, six large granite blocks were placed upon Waters. 239 the reef ready for use, and all the six were heaved by the waves over a ledge to a distance of more than twelve paces. On the east coast of England, the wear of land is markedly shown. There were, once upon a time, certain Yorkshire towns or villages, named Auburn, Hartburn, and Hyde, but they are to be seen no longer. Sandbanks, overflowed by the sea, lie over their former sites. Along Norfolk shores, the chalk-cliffs are crum- bling steadily away before the waves. In the year 1805, an inn was built in Sherringham, at a certain distance from the cliff-edge. It was known well that the sea, eating away the land, must in time approach the inn. Observations had been carefully made, and the wearing away was believed to be at the rate of less than one yard each year. It was calculated, therefore, that the inn might be con- sidered safe for seventy years to come; yet a very short time proved this calculation to be wrong. In 1805, full fifty yards lay clear between the house and the sea. In 1829, only fourteen years later, seven- teen yards of land were already swept away, and only a small garden divided the inn from the devour- ing ocean. An instance this of how easily mistakes may be made in any such attempted calculations. 240 The World's Foundations. Also in Norfolk whole towns have been demol- ished. Ancient Cromer lies beneath the Ocean. Shipden, Wimpwell, Eccles, have been slowly swal- lowed. One town and another, on the east coast, is compelled to beat a gradual retreat before the enemy, building more and more inland, yielding one house after another to the encroaching waters. In other parts the same is seen, markedly so with the crumbling white chalk cliffs of the south coast of England. When Queen Elizabeth reigned, Brighton was built upon the same belt of land, where now the chain-pier runs out into deep water. Measures have been taken to check these inroads of the sea; but for centuries Brighton went backwards, step by step, before the ocean. Between Hastings and Eastbourne the shore-line has long receded steadily before the waves, and a haven which once existed in Pevensey Bay is now filled up with shingle. In some parts the yearly waste has been as much as seven feet of land. At the neighboring pro- montory, Beachey Head, a great fall of material took place in 1813, a mass of chalk, three hundred feet long and seventy broad, descending with a mighty crash to the shore below. Waters. 241 Somewhat to the west of Newhaven, there are remains of an ancient earthwork, supposed to have been British. The greater part of this entrench- ment has been carried away by the waves. Two other ancient camps, one near Seaford, and one near Eastbourne, have been in like manner partly destroyed. It is said that during some eighty years, no less than twenty distinct inundations of parts of the coast of Sussex took place, permanently overwhelm- ing tracts of land, which varied in extent from twenty to four hundred acres. Examples more or less like in kind might be brought forward, as to the coasts of Holland, as to other European countries, as to America. But enough has been said to show the power of the ocean, now and through ages past, in wearing away firm land. CHAPTER XXV. DELTAS. "He hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods." PSA. xxiv. 2. THE wearing away of rock and earth is not the only work done by water in the world. For while it pulls down, it also builds up; while it wastes, it also heaps together. The material which it steals from the land in one place, it often adds to the land in another place. One has well said of a mountain-torrent: "It lays down what it will remove, and removes what it has laid down." This, which is true of every torrent, is true of all streams and rivers, nay, of the very ocean itself. The work of building up land is most plainly to be seen at the mouths of rivers. Deposits on the ocean-bottom, at a great distance from shore, doubt- Deltas. 243 less take place constantly, but we cannot see this for ourselves; whereas the growth of land at a river's mouth may easily be observed. When a river, laden with sand and earth which it has stolen from the land, reaches the sea, the speed of the flowing water is suddenly checked by the incoming waves. The weight which the river was able to carry, while moving quickly, it can no longer support, and sand and earth sink to the bot- tom, forming there in layers. This is the way in which sand-bars or mud-banks are made. In the case of a small river, the deposit takes place very near the shore, sometimes almost choking up the mouth of the stream. The larger and more powerful the river, the farther out to sea will the materials be carried before they are dropped. This is the way also in which river-deltas are made. The name Delta is given to the tract about the mouth of a large river, because of its likeness in shape to the Greek letter of that name A. The river, after flowing long as a single stream, divides into two or more streams, branching off and reach- ing the sea by different channels. The low lands lying between these different chan- nels have been slowly built up by the river out of 244 The World's Foundations. the materials which it has stolen on its course. The whole of these lands, from the spot where first the river separates into two down to the ocean, is called the Delta. Many changes take place in the deltas of great rivers. Now one arm and now another becomes quite choked up with sand or mud, and the water ceases to flow there, taking to another channel. There are three kinds of deltas. First, those which are formed by rivers flowing into lakes. Sec- ondly, those which are formed by rivers flowing into inland seas, where there is almost no tide. Thirdly, those which are formed by rivers flowing into the ocean where there are full tides. The first two are much alike, except that the kinds of animal-remains found in them differ; being in the one case those of fresh-water creatures, and in the other case those of salt-water creatures. The Rhone, passing through the Lake of Geneva, gives us an example of a Lake-Delta. Building up of new land in the lake has continued there through ages. Laden with sediment torn from the crumbling mountains, the river enters the lake at one end, drops its material layer upon layer, passes through the whole length of the lake, and Deltas. 245 flows out at the other end, pure and clear, having left a load of mud behind. The land thus formed grows steadily, reaching farther and farther into the lake. A certain town, Port Vallais by name, which in the days of the Romans was close to the water's edge, is now one mile and a half inland, showing that about one mile and a half of land has been built by the river in the course of the last eight hundred years. Before that date five or six miles of the delta had been built. The Rhone does not long remain pure after its passage through the Lake of Geneva. It is speed- ily joined by the Arve, heavily laden with sand and other materials from the glaciers of Mont Blanc. More rivers join her later, bearing sandy and muddy donations from the Alps of Dauphiny. When at length the Rhone enters the Mediterranean, its powerful stream stains the blue waters for a dis- tance of six or seven miles, as it drops once more its later burden, this time in the sea. The Rivers Po and Adige, flowing into the Adri- atic, give an example of rapid land-building. From fear of their inundations at flood-seasons, the in- habitants of the country have long built embank- ments to close them in. The rivers, being thus unable to spread themselves over their wider beds, 246 The World's Foundations. and to make deposits on the low lands around, are compelled to carry nearly all their sediment to the sea. The growth of land there is consequently much more rapid than if there were no such embank ments. It would have been more so still, but for the fact that the shores are, and have long been, slowly sinking. Even thus, however, the increase of new river- built land along the coast, for a distance of one hundred miles, has been within the last two thou- sand years as much as from two to twenty miles in breadth. The town Adria, which in the time of Augustus bordered the sea, now stands some twen- ty Italian miles inland. The delta of the Nile is one of slow growth, but it may have been much faster in early ages, before it reached so far out into the sea as to be swept by the strong current which coasts the north of Africa. Much newly-formed land is from time to time car- ried away by this stream; and here again, as in North Italy, the gradual sinking of the shores pre- vents the more rapid apparent growth of the delta. Moreover, although the Nile brings much mud and sand from the interior of Africa, a large pro- portion of the material is dropped upon Egypt in Deltas. 247 the flood-seasons. But for this Egypt would be a barren land indeed. Each flood-season, when the river overflows the flat lands around, it places a new thin film of earth upon the layers of centuries before, thus ever deepening the soil. Then, bear- ing on only the lightest and finest particles through the rest of its course, it reaches the ocean, and there drops them in some part of the many-armed delta, or carries them yet further, to discolor the blue Mediterranean through thirty or forty miles. The Nile stands alone among rivers in the singu- lar fact that, during the last fifteen hundred miles of its journey, it is joined by no tributary stream. The delta of the Nile is at its base, or where it joins the sea, about two hundred miles wide. Two great Indian rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmapootra, offer another good instance of del- ta-building. Coming from almost opposite directions, they meet and mingle, so that one vast delta serves them both in size more than double that of the Nile. This "great delta of Bengal," as it is called, is in part made up of a bewildering maze of large and small streams, some filled with salt water from the inflowing sea, and some with fresh water from the outflowing rivers. The portion known as the 248 The World's Foundations. Sunderbunds, a tiger-infested wilderness, is alone as large as Wales. Perpetual changes take place in this immense delta. One season is a time of floods, and masses of new land are swept out to sea. Again, the ocean rushing in, carves out fresh channels in the low muddy banks. Or new islands are rapidly formed, only to be as rapidly destroyed. In one spot, no less than twenty-five thousand square miles of delta-land were carried away in the course of a few years. Early in the present century, a new island was formed, about four miles out to sea, near the mouth of the Hooghly one of the channels in this delta. It grew to a length of two miles and a half, and houses were built upon it. In 1823 there came a tremendous gale, and the island was cut into two smaller islands. A few years more, and the former island had been worn away to a mere low sand-bank, about half a mile long. These two great rivers are, in fact, ever build- ing up new land in and about the delta, while the ocean is ever seeking to destroy that which the rivers have built. One more instance of a delta may be given in that of the mighty Mississippi. This great stream, Deltas. 249 if measured with its windings, has a length of three thousand miles, and the land which it drains is over half the size of all Europe. The Delta of the Mississippi is about two hun- dred and forty miles across in one direction, and about one hundred and forty miles across in the other. It covers more than twelve thousand square miles. The river travels chiefly in great bends, making sand-banks at each bend; often changing its course; frequently building up new land, and as frequently washing away what it has built. Enormous quan- tities of trees are carried down the stream, and dropped in the delta; and no doubt many ani- mal-remains also are imbedded there in the low banks. The great force of the river bears it on as a fresh-water stream to a distance of more than twelve miles into the ocean. Some attempts have been made to calculate or to guess at the time probably occupied in the forming of this vast delta. A certain quantity of sediment was fixed upon as that which the river was supposed to bring down each year to the delta. It was also supposed that this quantity had always been about the same, every year, through centuries and ages past. It 250 The World's Foundations. was then calculated that if this quantity were correct, and if the amount of sediment had always been equal the delta must have taken about sixty- seven thousand years to form. A little later, however, it was found that the quantity of material brought down yearly by the river was very much more than had been first im- agined. So the calculation had to be made over again; and this time it was decided that the delta- lands might have been built in the course of thirty- three thousand five hundred years. Whether these figures will have to be halved again remains to be seen. That the time was long, very long, appears highly probable. But how long it lasted man cannot say. Indeed, apart from other difficulties in finding out the age of a delta-formation, the uncertainty as to how far land thereabouts may have risen or sunk in past ages renders almost useless any such attempted calculation. Before quitting the subject of water-action, a lit- tle illustration from present days may be given, in explanation of the fossil rain-drop marks and fossil footprints so often mentioned in earlier chapters. On the borders of the Bay of Fundy, in Nova Deltas. 251 Scotia, there are broad mud-flats lying within reach of the tides. The rise of the tide there amounts to no less than fifty feet. Parts of these mud-flats are cov- ered and uncovered every day; but other parts, farther off from the sea, are only reached by the highest spring-tides, and for a week, or even a fortnight at a time, they remain dry and untouched by the waves. It may be easily imagined how, in these upper reaches of mud, the marks of rain-drops or the foot- prints of passing animals, if received immediately after a high spring-tide while the mud is still soft, would have time to harden into a permanent shape before the next high tide came, a fortnight later, to deposit another layer of sand. A traveller, passing the spot in question, after- wards described the mud near the sea as being too soft to retain impressions, and the mud far away from the sea as being too hard to receive them. But between these two he discovered a belt of soft mud, just of the right consistency to take and to keep markings. On splitting open slabs of this mud, he found prints or casts of rain-drops hardened into lower layers of the mud, afterwards covered over by later sand-droppings out of the waters. CHAPTER XXVI. GLACIERS. "He casteth forth His ice like morsels; who can stand before His cold?" PSA. cxlvii. 17. THE work which Glaciers are believed to have done in past times has been already more than once described. In the present chapter we have not so much to think about any one particular Ice-Age, as to gather from glaciers and icebergs of the present day certain facts which may help us to a clearer understanding of the past. A glacier, as before explained, is simply a river of ice; not fed, like a river of water, by rains and springs, but by masses of snow and freezing mist in high mountain-regions. Also, just as a common river is fed by lesser streams, so a large glacier is fed by lesser glaciers. The flow of a glacier is in many respects like that Glaciers. 253 of a river. It usually follows the course of a valley. It travels faster in summer than in winter, and nearly as fast by night as by day. In the ice of a glacier, as in the water of a river, the movement is quicker at the surface than down below, and quicker at the middle than at the sides. The reason for this is that the bottom and sides, both of a water- river and of an ice-river, are retarded or kept back by the rubbing of the bed and banks. Moreover, a glacier is like an ordinary river in the manner in which it suits itself to the shape of its bed, narrowing or widening according to need. A glacier is known to spread itself over a bed two thousand yards wide, and then to press through a gorge only nine hundred yards wide, still continu- ing its steady onward march. A glacier will pass round a bend, like a river; and like a river also it has its occasional cataracts or ice-falls, where masses of ice, in slow succession, plunge over a precipice. A glacier is however, unlike a river, in the fact that it not only moves downhill and along level ground, but sometimes for a space will even travel up a gentle slope. All these particulars make the subject of glaciers a mysterious one. A great many theories are put forward to explain them. 254 The World's Foundations. Some think that the onward motion of glacier-ice is caused by the earth's attraction; just as water is thus caused to run downhill. Some think that it moves only because the ice behind keeps pressing it on. Others think that the heat of the sun causes it to travel along the ground. Ice is in a measure elastic, not hard and stiff like rock; and it is believed that the rapidity with which the masses of ice break and freeze together again has somewhat to do with the explanation of the mystery. Icebergs are large masses or mountains of ice, which have snapped off from the bottom or foot of some enormous glacier, and have floated away on the sea. Icebergs are often of a very great size. Whatever quantity of ice is seen to rise above the water in an iceberg, there is always about eight times as much below the water. You will understand this better if you float a small lump of ice in a basin, and notice what a small proportion of the whole lump remains out of the water. The weight and force of these floating ice-moun- tains is sometimes terrific. Many a ship, caught between two of them, or between an iceberg and a W. Foundations. i'LOATING 1CEBEKG. p. 254. Glaciers. 255 grounded ice-field, has been crushed, as an egg- shell may be crushed between two fingers of a man's hand. In England and Scotland glaciers no longer exist. They are found on the high mountains of the Con- tinent, in the northern parts of Europe and North America, and also in Antarctic lands. One of the principal Swiss glacier-districts is that of Mont Blanc. The vast snow-fields of the summit give rise to glacier after glacier, creeping slowly down each chief valley, the long tongues of ice reaching far below the usual " snow-line" ; and when at length they melt, sending on rushing streams laden with earth and stones. The stones, many of them scratched and scored from being dragged along over the rocky bed of the glacier, are dropped in heaps near its end, forming the "terminal moraine"; but the muddy turbid stream flows down the mountain-side, until it joins some ocean-bound river. The north-western gla- ciers of the Mont Blanc district send their streams into the River Arve, spoken of in the last chapter, while the south-eastern feed the Doire. The great Mer de Glace, or Sea of Ice, so often described by travellers to Mont Blanc, is made up 256 The World's Foundations. of several of these glaciers in the upper part of their course. The ice of the Col du Geant, travel- ling slowly down the Mer de Glace, does not reach the further end in less than one hundred and twenty years. Some of the Swiss glaciers are as much as six hundred feet deep, twenty or thirty miles long, and two or three miles wide; but this is not common. After all, the grandest of Swiss glaciers sink into nothing, when we leave them behind and wander in thought to the dreary wastes of Greenland. There it is that we may learn most about the possibility of a past Ice- Age upon the earth. Little of Greenland is known beyond the strip of habitable ground near the sea-shore. For with this exception, the whole great country is a lonely wil- derness, buried deep beneath massive glaciers and perpetual snows. Few mountain-peaks rise out of the vast bewildering sea of whiteness. Yet even in that seemingly dead and ice-bound land God's forces are at work. Even in that awful waste of lifeless desolation there is perpetual change. Not alone in the fearful storms which sweep across the level expanse, filling the air with blinding snow. Apart from this, the change goes on. As in Swiss Glaciers. 257 mountains on a small scale, so in Greenland on a gigantic scale, glaciers creep out from beneath the snow-masses, and make their way to the ocean, there sending masses of ice southward, to melt in warmer waters. And the winds from the south car- rying vapors north, these vapors freeze and descend as snow or frozen mist upon the wide plains; thus keeping up the supply which through the glaciers is ever draining away. So the circulation of water, which goes on incessantly through all the world, goes on also in even those far-north regions. The great Humboldt glacier of -Greenland pours like other ice-rivers down its gorge, straight into the sea; and ends abruptly in a massive wall or cliff of ice, some sixty miles broad, and three hundred feet high. But this is its height above the water only. How deep it descends below the water is not known. For these Greenland glaciers push their way out along the bed of the ocean, to a distance of sev- eral miles, into deeper and deeper water, holding toughly together, and resisting the buoying up tendency of the sea. The mass of the glacier can- not rise, since ice, though to a certain degree elastic, is unable to bend. When a certain depth is reached, the strain becomes too great for further resistance. 258 The World's Foundations. At this point the strong upward pressure of the water causes huge masses of ice to split off and spring to the surface, making the ocean far around to seethe and foam like a cauldron of boiling water. These huge masses floating southward are called Icebergs. In Switzerland the glaciers bear long trains of debris, dropped upon, them from the crumbling peaks and cliffs. Such moraines are far more rare in Greenland glaciers. The whole country is so completely buried beneath masses of snow, as to leave few peaks bare. Near the shore, indeed, the strewing of boulders on either side of the glacier increases; yet the great width of the glaciers makes it comparatively a small matter. Of all the icebergs which break away from the foot of such a glacier, only those coming from the extreme left or right would be likely to bear any large blocks. It is, however, not impossible that icebergs from the middle might have stones or rocks frozen in underneath them. That many icebergs do carry heavy weights of material is undeniable. The traveller, Scoresby, who saw some five hundred icebergs in about 69 and 70 degrees north latitude, describes many of Glaciers. 259 them as bearing great loads of earth and rock, amounting in weight to fifty thousand or even one hundred thousand tons. Some of these bergs were a mile round; and many of them most likely came from Spitzbergen, which, like Greenland, has its great glaciers. Any rocks or stones carried off by icebergs are necessarily dropped upon the ocean-floor, when the iceberg melts. The ocean-floor is not a mere flat plain, but con- sists, like the continents, of mountains, hills, table- lands, valleys, and lower levels. So it is easily un- derstood how an occasional big boulder, brought from mountains far away, may be dropped upon a lofty peak or height beneath the ocean; which boulder, if that peak should ever be lifted up as dry land, might offer a curious appearance to geologists. Such burdens on icebergs of the south Antarctic Ocean seem to be even more common than on ice- bergs of the cold northern seas. There is yet another mode by which stones and rocks are scattered over the ocean bed, and by which they may have been scattered, in ages past, over what was then the ocean bed and is now dry land. Beneath the cliffs on Greenland shores, the sur- 26o The World's Foundations. face of the sea freezes into a broad shelf or " ice- foot." This frozen platform is often one hundred and fifty feet broad, and rises as much as thirty feet above the water. It is attached to the cliff, and it follows every bend and curve in the coast-line. In the more northern latitudes it lasts all the year round, though varying in amount; while in the more southern parts of Greenland it breaks up and dis- appears every summer. As the short summer, with its partial thaws, ap- proaches, quantities of rocky rubbish fall from the cliffs upon this ice-shelf. Towards the north it is often buried beneath the collected piles of year after year, and is only relieved by the occasional break- ing off and floating away of a large piece, when loose ice-floes are driven sharply against it by winds and currents. But towards the south, as the warmth increases, the ice-foot is gradually demolished. Large por- tions heavily laden, are separated one after another, and borne away by the tide; each slowly thawing, and dropping to the bottom of the sea its pile of debris. CHAPTER XXVII. VOLCANOES. " He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth; He toucheth the hills, and they smoke." PSA. civ. 32. VOLCANOES are not scattered equally over all the earth. Here or there one such mountain may stand, or seem to stand, alone; but more com- monly they are arranged in groups or lines. If, as many think, volcanoes are the outlets or safety- valves to vast underground reservoirs of fire, it is probable that one such reservoir often feeds several volcanoes. A volcano is generally a cone-shaped mountain or hill, with a deep hollow or basin in the sum- mit called a Crater. From this crater there are openings leading down into the underground fire- seas. The cone of a volcano is usually built out of the materials thrown up from underground. Sometimes 262 The World's Foundations. the cone is made of cinders, sometimes of tufa, a substance which comes from the hot cinders being wetted with heavy rain, sometimes of lava or melted rock; but more commonly of all three mingled. A new cone has been known to spring into being in a single day. Some volcanoes have only one cone and one crater, while others have several cones and several craters. Volcanoes are divided into three classes Active, Dormant, and Extinct. The active volcanoes are those which, from time to time, show signs of life by eruptions, more or less marked. Extinct or dead volcanoes are those which have so long remained quiet, that the fire-seas below are supposed to be exhausted. But this is seldom a matter of cer- tainty. Volcanoes, thought to be dead, have sud- denly proved themselves, by an unexpected out- burst to be alive, and to have been only dormant or sleeping. Active volcanoes differ much in kind. Some are rarely known to be without signs of disturbance; others only have occasional outbursts, at more or less regular intervals of time. Some, during an eruption, throw out a large amount of solid mate- rial; others contain chiefly liquid lava. Some break out only through the crater. Others split open in Volcanoes. 263 any part of the mountain-side, and desolate the country round. The tremendous nature of these underground fire-forces, and the enormous amount of molten rock which must be lying stored in earth's reser- voirs, can be best known from such facts as follow. In South America a long line of volcanoes stretches along the western coast, bordering the Pacific. Many of these Volcanoes of the Andes are believed to be extinct, but others continue active. Some of them outdo in loftiness Mont Blanc itself. Cotopaxi, for instance, is little less than nineteen thousand feet in height, being clothed commonly in a robe of spotless snow. This whole vast mass of snow has been known to vanish in a single night, under the tremendous heat of a sudden outbreak. As a rule, not much lava is thrown from the volcanoes of the Andes, but more of vapor and ashes. Sometimes from outpourings of water, or sudden meltings of snow, tremendous rushes of mud have flowed down the mountain-sides and over the country round the liquid mingling on its way with sand and stones. Valleys one thousand feet in 264 The World's Foundations. width have been completely blocked up with such mud, to a height of six hundred feet. In Mexico there are five great active volcanoes in a single chain, one of them being called Jorullo. About a century and a half ago the table-land, from which the Jorullo cone now rises, was a fair landscape, where the indigo and the sugar-cane were cultivated, and the inhabitants lived in all seeming security. Suddenly, in the month of June, 1759, suspicious underground rumblings and grumblings were heard, and by-and-by severe quakings of the earth fol- lowed. There were many who took alarm, and fled for safety. Well for them that they did so. Two months of earthquakes were followed by the outbreak of flames from the ground, and masses of burning rock were flung high into the air. Then the whole surface of the country thereabouts seemed to be uplifted, like a huge swelling bubble, and vast quantities of lava mixed with cinders were poured forth, building no less than six separate cones. One who had lived there, and had tilled the land for many a year, watched from a distant height this strange transformation of his peaceful farmstead into a fiery furnace. Forty years later the great upheaved mass, with VV. Fi>ui:d:it p. 264. Volcanoes. 265 its smoking cones, was still warm. Two little rivers, which had once flowed in the fair plain, had van- ished altogether, and were heard of no more. Some of the mightiest eruptions known so far as regards the amount of lava poured out, have been those of Iceland. The year 1783 was remarkable for the great out- break of the Icelandic Volcano, Skaptar Jokul. The first sign of coming mischief was the bursting out of a volcano under the sea, about thirty miles from land. A new island was built up out of the ma- terials there belched forth from beneath ocean's floor, and the King of Denmark claimed it for his own, naming it "New Island." His Majesty en- joyed but a brief possession. One year went by, and the loose pile had been washed away by the restless waves. Meanwhile earthquakes became more and more severe in Iceland, and at length the threatened eruption came. A fierce torrent of liquid lava burst from the crater of the Skaptar Jokul, and poured down the mountain. The river Skapta flowed below in a gorge between steep rocks, two hundred feet apart, and from four to six hundred feet high. 266 The World's Foundations. The lava took the course of this river-bed, drying up the stream, filling up the whole gorge, and pouring over the lofty cliffs into the fields on either side. Still pressing onward, it reached the end of the rocky gorge, where a deep lake used to stand. The lava invaded the lake, banished the water, filled up the entire hollow, and again advanced. After a while it reached a mighty cataract, where anew it took the place of the water, pouring over in a stream of liquid rock. Thence it spread widely over the lower countries, carrying desolation wherever it went. By this time the Skapta channel was completely blocked, and still the lava stream poured unceas- ingly from underground. It now took a new course, started in another direction, invaded a sec- ond river, filled another deep gorge, and spread itself out again over another part of the lower country. Of these two streams, composed of fiery melted rock, one was fifty miles in length, the other only five miles less; one spread itself out to a breadth of fifteen miles at its widest, the other to seven miles; while each was for a considerable part of its course as much as a hundred feet deep, and in the rocky defiles no less than six hundred feet. Volcanoes. 267 Some twenty villages were destroyed, and about nine thousand people lost their lives. It has been reckoned that the amount of lava poured out from Skaptar Jokul in those few months, was sufficient to make an entire mountain as large as Mont Blanc. The volcano Etna, rising to a height of nearly eleven thousand feet, may almost be described as a mass of volcanoes, rather than as one. It has indeed a chief cone, and a principal crater, but it has also two hundred or more lesser cones with their lesser craters, outgrowths from itself. These spring from and circle round upon the mighty cen- tral cone, somewhat after the fashion to use a rather inappropriate simile of a hen-and-chicken daisy. One of these lesser cones is described as seven hundred feet high. Some of them continue still to smoke, while others are overgrown by trees. From the great centre crater sulphureous vapors are perpetually poured forth, and thence from time to time come streams of lava. A great Etna eruption took place in 1669, and one of the lesser cones, Monte Rossi, was then formed. There was first a warning earthquake, which 268 The World's Foundations. levelled a whole town in the neighborhood. Next, in a plain near, a tremendous ground-crack sud- denly appeared, splitting to a distance of twelve miles. It was about six feet wide, and shone with a lurid light, from the glowing lava within. Five more such huge cracks opened alongside. Lava then poured out in a stream from the new cone, Monte Rossi, at that time formed or being formed, and as it poured it rapidly overwhelmed fourteen towns and villages. The inhabitants of Catania, in dread of such an event, had surrounded their town with a strong wall, sixty feet high. The flood of liquid rock streaming over the country reached Catania, piled itself slowly higher and higher, till the top of the wall was reached, and then flowed over, deluging the nearer part of the town. The wall remained standing, and to this day the cold lava may be seen, looking as if petrified in the act of creeping over the rampart. This lava stream journeyed its first thirteen miles in twenty days, but cooling steadily as it moved, it took twenty-three days for the last two miles. When finally it reached the sea, it was still forty feet deep and nine hundred feet wide. Volcanoes. 269 A fearful outburst took place in the island of Java many years ago. The mountain Galongoon, up to the year 1822, showed no signs of disturbance, being clothed in a thick growth of forests. The country around was cultivated and peopled. At the top of the mountain there might indeed be seen a cup-shaped hollow, but no records had been handed down of any former outburst, and no expectations of evil were felt. All at once in the month of July, the waters ot the Kunir, a river close at hand, became heated, with no apparent reason. Nearly three months passed without further tokens of mischief. Then, on the 8th of October, a tremendous explosion was heard, and the ground shook beneath men's feet; while hot water and boiling mud, with brim- stone and ashes, were poured upwards out of the mountain-top, like a huge ascending water-spout, which rose high before it fell to earth and deluged the country. So tremendous was the force exerted, that some of the matter thrown out in this jet reached the ground at a distance of forty miles from Galongoon. For a distance of twenty-four miles in that same direction, the land was fairly inundated by bluish 270 The World's Foundations. mud, to such a depth that villages were entirely buried beneath it. The boiling mud and red-hot cinders were flung out with such violence, that they passed in a great measure over the nearer villages, and did most damage to those lying farther away. Many human bodies literally boiled in mud were strewn about. The first outbreak went on for about five hours, and was followed by heavy rain. Four day-s later another yet more fearful outburst took place. Again hot water and mud were poured forth, and huge basaltic rocks were flung bodily to a dis- tance of seven miles, as a child may toss a pebble across the road; while a great earthquake shook the island, and one whole side of the mountain broke down, an immense gulf being thus suddenly formed. Truly we find a lesson here for the student of Geology, as to the mode in which great changes on the earth's surface may here or there, at one time or another, have been rapidly brought about. It was said that over one hundred villages were destroyed, and that over four thousand people were killed in this eruption. Two good opposite instances of volcanoes con- taining chiefly solid and chiefly liquid kinds of mat- Volcanoes. 27 1 ter, are the volcano of Vesuvius in Naples, and the volcanoes of Hawaii in the Sandwich Islands. Vesuvius is the chief of a volcanic group. The island of Ischia, belonging to this group, was great- ly troubled by earthquakes and fiery outbreaks, be- fore the Christian era, in times when Vesuvius was looked upon as an extinct volcano. From the time when the fires of Vesuvius began to play, Ischia en- joyed quietness up to the year 1302. An outbreak then took place, and again it lived in peace up to the present year. While this chapter is being ac- tually written, another outbreak has occurred March, 1881 and at least two hundred people have been suddenly and awfully cut off. Some think that there may be a connection be- tween the underground fire-seas of Vesuvius and Etna. It has been noticed that when one great mountain is active, the other appears usually to be at rest. If a single vast reservoir of liquid lava and furnace-heat lies below the two, reaching from one to the other, we can easily understand how both safety-valves would not be in action at the same time. In early ages Vesuvius was looked upon as an ex- tinct or at least as a dormant volcano. The first known eruption was the famous one of 79, wherein 272 The World's Foundations. the towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii were buried beneath showers of ashes. A great eruption took place in the same volcanic neighborhood, in the year 1538. Earthquakes shook the country; fire burst from the ground; ashes, stones, and water were poured forth; the sea was driven back from the Bay of Baiae; the solid ground was uplifted in the form of a huge bubble: a mouth or crater opened in this bubble, to pour out stones, ashes, and mud; and in less than a week chiefly in the course of twenty-four hours the Monte Nuovo or New Hill was formed, being over four hundred feet in height, and a mile and a half round at its bottom. A description of the Vesuvian eruption of 1779, given by an eyewitness, says that "Jets of. liquid lava, mixed with stones and scoriae, were thrown up to the height of at least ten thousand feet, hav- ing the appearance of a column of fire." All this matter falling back upon the cone and shining bril- liantly with a "lurid red light, seemed to be one vast mass of fire, sending heat to a distance of six miles around." In another such eruption "millions of red-hot stones were shot into the air, full half the height of the cone itself, and then, bending, fell all round in a fine arch." Volcanoes. 273 In the early part of the present century, the great crater of Vesuvius had been slowly filled up with lava rising from below, or with other materials tossed up in lesser outbreaks. The crater was, in fact, scarcely a cup any longer, or at least it was no empty cup. When the eruption of 1822 took place, all these collected materials were flung clean out in one mighty effort, and once more a great empty hollow was left, three-quarters of a mile across. So strong was the explosion which worked this sud- den clearance, that about eight hundred feet of the mountain-top were blown completely away by it. Although lavas flow from Vesuvius, yet a consid- erable proportion of the material thrown up is of a more solid nature, such as granite, sand, stones, cinders, and dust. A marked difference is seen in the volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands. The chief volcanoes of Hawaii, Mount Loa, Mount Koa or Kea, and Mount Kilauea, are more or less mere shells, filled with very liquid lava. Eruptions in these mountains commonly take place, either through the breaking down of part of the crater-brim, from the weight of the rising liquid within; or through the opening of a sudden crack or rent in the side of the heavily-charged 274 The World's Foundations. mountain. Either way the lava streams down and inundates the country. The following extract so well bears upon the sub- ject of Geology that I cannot forbear quoting it: "At Hilo . . . they have felt the perpetual shud- der of earthquakes. . . Once they traced a river of lava burrowing its way fifteen hundred feet below the surface, and saw it emerge, and fall hissing into the ocean. Once from their highest mountain a pillar of fire, two hundred feet in diameter, lifted itself for three weeks one thousand feet into the air, making night day for one hundred miles round, and leaving as its monument a cone one mile in circum- ference. We see a clothed and finished earth; they see the building of an island, layer on layer, hill on hill, the naked and deformed product of the melt- ing, forging and welding, which go on perpetually in the crater of Kilauea."* And again, with reference to Mount Loa: "It is probable that the whole interior of this huge dome is fluid; for the eruptions from this summit-crater do not proceed from its filling up and running over, but from the mountain-sides being unable to bear the enormous pressure, when they give way, high or low, and bursting allow the fiery contents to "Travels in the Sandwich Islands," by I. Bird. Volcanoes. 275 escape. So in 1855 the mountain-side split open, and the lava gushed forth thirteen months, in a stream which ran for sixty miles and flooded Hawaii for three hundred square miles." In the summit of Kilauea there are open lakes of liquid fiery rock, described by travellers as fearfully sublime and beautiful. You have seen the bubbles which break out upon the surface of water boiling in a pot. Such bubbles are seen upon the great lava- lake of Kilauea a boiling pot one thousand feet across, the bubbles being fire-fountains, thirty or forty feet in height, playing majestically over the glowing surface. In these Hawaiian outbreaks of lava, earthquakes were not commonly known to take place; but in 1865 there came an eruption of exceptional nature. So fearful and continued were the quakings of the solid ground beforehand, that men held their breath for fear. Houses fell shattered; trees rolled to and fro, slashing the air; people sat clinging to the earth, rocked helplessly from side to side; the ground gaped in thousands of places; and the whole country " quivered like the lid of a boiling pot." In one place three hundred shocks were counted in a single day; while in other places they were uncountable. 276 The World's Foundations. Then appeared suddenly great rents in the moun- tain-side, and lava-jets shot madly upward to the height of a thousand feet. Rivers of lava poured seaward from these fissures, turning a fair country into a scorched wilderness, wrecking villages, de- stroying life, making havoc of all that lay in their path. During more than a week four distinct jets or fountains continued to pour upward out of the rents to a height of five hundred or a thousand feet. At the same time the crater of Mount Loa, and also the crater of Kilauea the latter being twenty miles distant, which before the eruption had been filled high with liquid lava, were gradually emptied. In some such Hawaiian eruptions the lava-streams have flowed, like those of Iceland, for a distance of fifty or sixty miles. CHAPTER XXVIII. EARTHQUAKES. " The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm . . . the mountains quake at Him . . . and the rocks are thrown down bj Him." NAHUM i. 3, 5, 6. THOUGH Earthquakes are often a mere accompani- ment to volcanic outbursts, taking place in volcanic districts; yet they often happen also in countries far removed from volcanoes, with no seeming connec- tion between the two. There can be no doubt, however, that the cause of earthquakes is connected with the cause of volcanic eruptions. A few particulars will now be given, more espe- cially in reference to earthquakes; those in the last chapter having been more especially in reference to volcanoes. The object in bringing them forward is still the same, to show the workings of the great underground agent, Fire; and to draw attention to the extreme uncertainties which exist as to the 278 The World's Foundations. manner and the speed of earth-crust formation in the past. Among many severe earthquakes which have been known to take place in New Zealand, there was one in 1855 which completely altered the appearance of the coast for a considerable distance. One small cove was described as having been, in a single night, changed into dry ground. The extent of country shaken by this earthquake was three times as much as the whole of the British Isles. In another New Zealand earthquake, of a few years earlier, a great rent or "fault" was caused in the mountain-strata. This split and slip, which took place suddenly, was only about eighteen inches wide, but it ran through the rocks for a distance of sixty miles. A hint lies here for us, as to how the greatest "faults" in America and elsewhere may have been produced. In 1835 a severe earthquake was felt in Chili, through about one thousand miles of country, run- ning north and south. Some years earlier there had been one in the same country, far more destructive. Through many months shocks went on almost continually, the most violent shock being on the iQth of November, Earthquakes. 279 1822. It reached through a distance of twelve hun- dred miles; and next morning men found that the entire coast had been bodily uplifted to a height of two, three, and four feet, varying in different parts, while inland the sudden upheaval must have been as much as six or seven feet. It was calculated that about one hundred thousand square miles had been thus raised in one tremendous effort of nature, remaining afterwards at its new level. Another instance, somewhat like in kind, hap- pened near Cutch, in India. A violent earthquake took place there, not far from the beginning of the present century, doing much damage. An estuary of the sea, where at high tide the water had been six feet deep, and at low water only one foot, be- came suddenly eighteen feet deep at low water; while the neighboring fort and village of Sundree were overflowed by the ocean. Some two thousand square miles of land were then and there transformed into an inland arm of the sea. Also, immediately after the shock, the inhabitants of Sundree, watching from a spot where they had fled for safety, could perceive a long raised mound, about five and a half miles distant, where before there had been a low flat plain. This mound, over fifty miles long, sixteen miles wide, and about ten 280 The World's Foundations. feet deep at its most, was named by them " Ullah Bund," or "The Mound of God." A strange fold- ing of the earth-crust seems there to have hap- pened; sharp rising and sinking side by side. In 1812 fearful earthquake-shocks were experi- enced in Caraccas, South America. The ground rapidly rose and fell, with terrible sounds beneath, and in a single moment the whole city became one vast pile of ruins, with ten thousand human beings buried in the wreck. Lava and water were thrown from a volcano not far distant. Somewhat before this event, and possibly con- nected with it, great disturbances took place in South Carolina and Missouri one of the compara- tively rare instances of severe and long-continued earth-shaking in places far distant from any volcano. Tremendous changes are described as having come about with awful suddenness. Land became cov- ered for many miles with water, and then became dry land again. Lakes, twenty miles across, were formed in the course of a single hour, and others were as rapidly emptied of all their contents. The New Madrid graveyard was launched bodily into the Mississippi; and the inhabitants of the town told afterwards how the ground had risen and sunk Earthquakes. 281 in great billows like the sea; and how, when these solid billows reached a certain height, they broke open, and water with sand and coal were spouted out to the height of the tree-tops. Hundreds of these gaping cracks were seen seven years after- wards by a traveller, remaining still unclosed. The shocks continued through three months, and the people gradually found that the cracks or fis- sures usually opened in a particular direction; so that, by felling large trees to lie in an opposite direction and taking refuge on the trunks, they sometimes escaped the fearful death of being swal- lowed alive, as were many of their number by the opening earth. Another great earthquake, in many respects simi- lar, happened in Calabria towards the close of the last century. An earthquake it can hardly be called, for though the shocks began in February, 1783, they went on during four years. The ground often swayed and heaved like the surface of the ocean, the motion being sometimes so strong that trees were seen to bend and touch their tips to the very earth, like an Eastern making his salaam, right- ing themselves again as the vibration passed on. In some parts the ground rose, in others it sank. Deep fissures were formed, and remained open. 282 The World's Foundations. Also, as the earthquake-wave swept by, many cracks yawned suddenly, without sign of warning, and swallowed men and beasts alive, the walls of the rent closing quickly upon them. In some rare instances, it was said that when people were thus swallowed and buried alive, another earthquake- wave following immediately, the same cracks opened again and flung out their living victims, with ac- companying jets of water. A fearful experience truly to have lived through ! In one place the cracks or fissures, instead of being regularly placed, ran branching every way from a centre, like the lines on a starred pane of glass. These remained permanently. One fissure, in another part, which after the earthquake was merely a big crack about a foot in width, had yawned so broadly as to swallow an ox and almost one hundred live goats. About forty thousand people were believed to have lost their lives directly through the earth- quake-shocks, and about twenty thousand more indirectly, through sicknesses caused by the earth- quake. The famous Earthquake of Lisbon in 1755 is too well known to require close description, yet I can hardly pass it entirely over. W. Foundations EARTHQUAKE AT LISBON. p. 82. Earthquakes. 283 It came with terrible suddenness. A sound like underground thunder was heard, a tremendous shock followed, and within six minutes about sixty thousand people were destroyed. The sea drew back, then rolled tempestuously in upon the land, as a wave fifty feet higher than its usual level, sweeping all before it. Neighboring mountains were shaken and rent, flames being seen to spring from them, and large masses of rock were flung down into valleys. The newly-built quay of Lisbon, upon which peo- ple had flocked for safety, sank suddenly down, and vanished into so'me unknown abyss. Not a man standing on it was ever seen again; and the water, which in that part had been only thirty feet deep, was said to have gained all at once a depth of six hundred feet. This earthquake was felt over an enormous dis- tance; the whole extent of land and sea affected being at least four times the size of Europe. The thrill reached to the Alps, to Sweden, to Germany, to Great Britain, to the West Indies, to the Canadian Lakes, to the north of Africa. About eight miles from Morocco, the shock was so violent that a whole village was swallowed bodily at one huge gulp, the earth opening and closing upon the 284 The World's Foundations, buildings with all their eight or ten thousand in- habitants. The same shock, extending through the ocean, sent great waves upon the land in many different places, as at Cadiz, at Tangier, and at Kinsale. An earthquake which took place in Jamaica, nearly two hundred years ago, should perhaps be mentioned. Here as elsewhere the ground heaved and swayed like a stormy sea, and burst into countless rents two or three hundred such cracks being often seen at once, opening and closing, as the earthquake-wave passed on. Many individuals were swallowed alive in these earth gashes. Some, as in Calabria, were buried for an instant, and then flung out again. Others were caught by the mid- dle, and were squeezed to death, as the gaping jaws of the chasm shut upon them. Others thus seized, had only their heads remaining above ground. Something may be gathered from these partic- ulars as to the work done by earthquakes in the fashioning of the earth's crust. Mountains have been shattered and split, cracked and faulted. Hills have been formed in a single night. Forests have been levelled at a blow. Miles of country have been Earthquakes. 285 suddenly lowered or suddenly raised. Valleys, ra- vines, fissures, have been instantaneously formed or deepened and widened. Sea -beaches have been lifted or depressed; water-coves have become dry land; lakes have been made or emptied; all in the course of a few hours. Towns and villages have been laid low, wrecked, buried underground, or engulphed in the ocean, with scarcely a moment's warning. With regard to volcanic eruptions, it is calculated that, taking large and small together, there may be about twenty in the world every year, on an average, or two thousand every century. Even supposing that there have never been any mightier or more frequent outbursts than in modern times a question about which we are necessarily in the dark, the amount of change worked in the earth's crust, by two thousand volcanic outbursts each century through countless ages, must indeed be great. Where actual eruptions have taken place in the past, signs of the same are often still visible in the shape of cones or lava. In Auvergne, for example, there are many such cones, once fiery and active, now cold and dead. But in other parts, where no such silent witnesses 286 The World's Foundations. are found, we are not thereby freed from uncer- tainties. Rather, we are plunged more deeply into them. For if we may say with some confidence that vol- canoes have not existed here or there, no such assertion can be made with regard to earthquakes. These abrupt movements of the crust reach to un- known distances from volcanoes, and their effects cannot in after - ages be distinguished from the effects of quieter alterations slowly taking place. There is not a country in the world which may not, at one time or another, have endured some of these terrific shakings. There is not a spot in the earth which may not have been upheaved or lowered, rent or dislocated, by earthquake-action. There is not a stratum in the earth-crust building which may not have been more or less affected by these underground influences. There is not a fault or a slip or a slide .in the rocks, there is not a displacement or a rise or a fall in the strata, there is not a bend or a twist or a fold in the layers, which may not have been the sudden and rapid result of disturbances below. Every chasm, every valley, every table -land, every mountain, which may be the result of slow and gradual water-working, may no less be, at least in part, Earthquakes. 287 the result of sudden and tremendous fire-working. The uncertainty in which we stand on such points, may well warn us to be careful in drawing con- clusions. It has been said: "Give me an earth- quake, and I will give you any physical condition you please." We can scarcely make too much allowance for these past unknown possibilities. CHAPTER XXIX. HOT SPRINGS. "Worship Him that made Heaven and Earth, and the Sea and the Fountains of Waters." REV. xiv. 7. A FEW more particulars still have to be given, as to the underground fiery forces, of which the vol- cano and the earthquake tell us so much. The risings, sinkings, and tremblings of land, detailed in the last chapter, although often reach- ing to a very great distance from any volcanic centre, were yet in almost every instance plainly connected with one or another such volcanic centre. But movements of the earth-crust do also take place, which cannot be distinctly traced as taking their rise at any such centre: albeit there is little doubt that they spring from the same cause. The examples given have been of rapid move- Hot Springs. 289 ment and sudden change. The underground forces do not, however, always work either rapidly or suddenly. There are gradual risings and gradual sinkings, as well as sudden and startling upheavals and subsidences. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, signs were first observed of a sudden change taking place on the coasts of lands bordering the Baltic Sea and German Ocean. Rocks once buried under the sea had become visible at low tide; towns which once bordered the sea had become inland cities; and former islands had become part of the mainland. Nay, ancient history had spoken of the whole of Scandinavia as an island, whereas it was then dis- tinctly joined to Europe. Plainly, therefore, men argued, the sea was beat- ing a retreat. It was evident that the waters of the Baltic Ocean and the German Sea were gradu- ally sinking. This idea roused opposition, and no wonder. For if the water were sinking lower in those two seas, it must have been sinking lower all through the Atlantic Ocean; and if throughout the Atlantic, then throughout the Pacific Ocean also, and in fact all over the world wherever open sea existed. If the whole ocean had really sunk at the rate cal- 290 The World's Foundations. culated some forty Swedish inches in one hundred years, or as much as fifteen feet during four hundred years why were not the same changes seen along all sea-coasts in all the world ? How was it that the change appeared, even in Sweden, more marked at one spot than at another ? Near Stockholm the waters seem to have sunk ten inches in a century, while at some distance to the north of Stockholm the alteration was two feet and a half in a century. If the sea were sinking at all, it must surely sink equally everywhere. So the idea of the sinking sea was given up, and the only other possible explanation was that the land had slowly risen. This is held to be the true explanation. The rise is not the same in all parts, but it is everywhere very slow and steady. How long it has gone on, or will continue to go on, we can- not tell. The remarkable part of the matter is, that so far back at least as history reaches no volcanic outbursts or earthquakes have happened in Sweden. A slight tremor may indeed have thrilled the land from some distant disturbance, as when the great Lisbon earthquake vibrated through Europe. But Sweden is no volcanic centre, and shows signs of no Hot Springs. 291 underground fire-seas. Yet doubtless this gradual rising is in some manner connected with the under- ground fiery worker. Greenland is, in like manner, a land peculiarly free from volcanic heavings or shakings; yet in Greenland also a somewhat similar change is taking place. The difference is that while Sweden is ris- ing, Greenland is sinking. For more than six hundred years past the coast of Greenland has been slowly going down, and the waves have been gradually creeping higher. The Greenlander is much too wise to build his hut close to the sea. In one place there are strong poles still visible under water, to which once upon a time the Moravian settlers used to fasten their boats. They had to retreat inland and leave their poles behind them. It will be seen in the next chapter that a large part of the floor of the Pacific Ocean is also thought to have been long gradually sinking, though about this we cannot be sure. Many risings and sinkings of land in past ages were spoken about in the second part of this book. The examples given in the present chapter and the one before, will show clearly how such sinkings may have come about either suddenly or slowly 292 The World's Foundations. either as some great catastrophe of an hour, or as a quiet change lasting through centuries. One remarkable instance of these variations in the earth's surface is to be seen in the ruined Temple of Jupiter Serapis, at Puzzuoli, not far from the Monte Nuovo. Three pillars remain standing, each one about forty feet in height. Above the pedestal of each rise twelve feet of smooth uninjured marble, and over them are nine feet, where borings through and through the marble have been made by a certain ocean shell-creature. This seems to show clearly that at one time the temple must have sunk so low through the sinking of the ground that the twelve feet of smooth mar- ble were covered up and protected by earth or rock, while the nine feet must have had ocean water flowing round them. Again an upheaval must have taken place later, lifting the ruined temple with its three standing pillars to their present posi- tion. The temple is believed to have been built long before the Christian Era. The downward and upward movements in this case were probably very slow. Had they been otherwise, the three pillars could scarcely have remained upright. Hot Springs. 293 By far the greater number of volcanoes in the world are placed at no great distance from the ocean; and it is supposed that water may have much to do with their eruptions. The most commonly received explanation of vol- canoes is that of vast underground fire-seas or fire- reservoirs, connected with the cone-shaped hills above ground by natural openings. As already explained, the cone-shaped hills are usually made entirely in the first instance out of materials poured up from below. A volcano may be looked upon as a necessary safety-valve to such a buried fiery furnace of tremendous heat and melted rock. Now it is well known that much water from the sea soaks into the nearest land, finding its way through the loose sand or through cracks and crev- ices in the rock. Thus it wanders on till it joins other streams, and at length finds its way up to the surface. But where these fiery lakes lie hard by, a dif- ferent result is likely to follow. Imagine the enor- mous extent of the reservoir which, for instance, supplies all the volcanoes along the mountain range of the Andes, or that which extends beneath the great Hawaiian group, or that which feeds the 294 The World's Foundations. mighty Vesuvian neighborhood. If sea-water in any large quantity should soak through the soils, and find its way to these fiercely-glowing reservoirs, we can imagine the tumult which must ensue. Every drop of water would be rapidly turned to steam, and the effects of large bodies of steam suddenly formed in a limited space are well known. Steam has mighty explosive power, as seen in numerous fear- ful accidents of bursting boilers and lost lives. This explanation may account for many great shakings and tremblings of land. The same, slightly modified, would also serve for the Hot-water springs of some countries. Such springs are found in many places, and often far removed from known volcanic centres. Look at the hot springs of Bath, for example. Bath is built in a basin surrounded by hills, probably the crater of an extinct volcano. No outbursts have been known to take place there within the memory of man, and no signs remain of outbursts in earlier ages. Yet in the bottom of that hill-encircled hollow, four streams of hot water, laden with mineral torn from the rocks, rush perpetually up from under- ground, and have so rushed for centuries past. One alone of these springs sends forth eight gal- Hot Springs. 295 Ions and a half every minute. The heat of the water is from about 114 degrees to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The amount of mineral borne up- wards in a single year by all four springs, has been calculated to be large enough for the mak- ing of a square column, one hundred and forty feet high and nine feet in diameter. Heated gases, to a large amount, are poured out with the water. The nearest known volcano lies four hundred miles away. But what if, below the pleasant town of Bath, there still lie the smouldering re- mains, deep underground, of the fiery reservoir from which the crater was probably once fed ? Water passing through the rocks in channels might thus be heated, and the temperature of the springs might thus be explained. Many more such hot springs are found in dif- ferent parts of Europe and America. A still more remarkable description of hot spring is the kind called a Geyser. The Geysers are, in fact, natural hot fountains, playing at intervals, with pauses between. There are Gey- sers in Iceland, in New Zealand, and in North America. 296 The World's Foundations. About thirty miles from the Icelandic volcano, Hecla with which no doubt they are connected one hundred Geysers may be found, within a compass of two miles. They break out from thick layers of lava, through which the hot streams have forced their way. The water rises through a nat- ural pipe, from underground regions, into a cup- shaped basin, larger or smaller according to the size of the particular Geyser. The great Geyser has a basin fifty-six feet in diameter one way, and forty-six feet the other. A mound surrounds it, built out of the flinty droppings from the waters. The play of the stream is up a pipe some ten feet in diameter, and known to descend abruptly seventy-eight feet. Sometimes the basin is empty, but more commonly it is full of clear boiling water. The eruption, as a rule, comes on gradually, with rumbling under- ground noises and shakings of the earth. The water is flung up in jets, with loud explosions, becoming more and more powerful, until the jets reach a height of one hundred and fifty or even two hundred feet. Clouds of vapor float away, and at length the flow of water stops. A sharp rush of steam up the pipe, with a thundering noise, closes the display. W. Foundations. Hot Springs. 297 Most of the Geysers play for about five or six minutes at a time, though sometimes they will go on for half an hour. It was found that, by throw- ing large stones down the pipe of one Geyser, an eruption could at any time be brought on. The stones, exploding into pieces, were thrown vio- lently to an unusual height. The Geysers of Iceland are far surpassed in num- ber by those of America. In the Yellowstone Park district there are hot and warm springs, to- gether with Geysers, amounting in all to some ten thousand, already known, while an unexplored region of them lies beyond. The "Giant Geyser" in this neighborhood has a partly broken-down cone, ten feet high, and twenty-four feet in diameter close to the ground. Its occasional hot jet of water rises to a height of one or two hundred feet. The "Beehive Geyser" throws out a jet to the same height, though its basin is very much smaller. Another called " Liberty Cap," has quite ceased to play, and is supposed to be extinct. While the "Beehive" cone is only three feet high, that of "Liberty Cap" is thirty feet. "Old Faithful" is yet another, so named because of its curious regularity in action. Once in every 298 The World's Foundations. sixty-five minutes, as a rule, it flings a jet to the height of a hundred and thirty feet. In one instance, two Geysers were seen to play alternately a duet of jets; one ceasing immediately the other began, and beginning as soon as the other left off. CHAPTER XXX. CORAL. "Thou hast made The sea and all that is therein." NEH. ix. 6. FROM liquid lava and boiling water, from fiery out- bursts and fearful earth-quakings, we turn now to quite another class of workers. For all lands in the world are not built up by rivers or piled together by volcanic eruptions. There are lands not indeed so wide in extent quietly raised, inch upon inch, through century after century, by the ceaseless activities of the soft jelly-bodied Polyp of southern seas called the Coral. Coral-animals lived once upon a time over Eng- land, when half-built English shores lay low under the ocean-waves, and over many other countries also of the temperate zones, where in these days they cannot exist. To learn about the coral now, we 300 The World's Foundations. must wend our way to the warm soft clime of the South Pacific Ocean or the Caribbean Sea. The hard substance, red, pink, or white in color, which we call coral, is made chiefly of lime, and is in fact a sort of inside skeleton to the soft-bodied living animal, the coral-polyp. When the coral-reef is growing, the slimy body of the jelly-like polyp is spread over the outside of the hard coral, busily gathering lime from the ocean-waters, and forming more and more of the hard substance, which lasts long ages after the delicate living creature has died. But if you look at a piece of coral, you will see it to be full of tiny holes or cells, many of them so small as to be like mere pin-pricks. Into these holes the polyp can almost entirely withdraw itself if alarmed. So the hard coral is only in part a kind of inside skeleton, since it serves also for an outside protecting shell. There are many different kinds of coral, and each kind thrives at its own particular depth in the ocean. Some descriptions are found as low as six or eight hundred, or even nine hundred feet, below the surface; but these are not reef-building corals. They are usually a solitary description, either living quite alone, or else living just a few Coral. 301 together, in which case the coral formed by the little company of polyps is generally branched. The reef-building kinds are not "deep-sea cor- als," but are found, as a rule, never to exist at a greater depth than one hundred and twenty feet. Also, neither they nor any other coral-polyps can live above water. So the work of reef and island- building has all to be carried on so it appears to us within the belt of water reaching from low-tide level to one hundred and twenty feet downwards. When such coral is found either below that depth or above water, it is dead the hard white skele- ton-substance remaining, with its little empty holes, and no living polyp. If this be so, how is it that coral lies above reach of the waves ? Also, how can coral be found as it certainly is far deeper down than one hundred and twenty feet ? The first of these questions is not difficult to answer. For there are other powers at work beside the busy animals. The coral polyps carry on their formation steadily, inch by inch, till they have built a broad platform up to the low-tide surface of the sea. There they stop, for they have no power to make farther advance. They may lengthen or 302 The World's Foundations. widen the bank of coral; they cannot raise it higher. If the waves should cease to wash over them they would die. But the sea carries on the unfinished work. The heavy swelling surge of the broad Pacific beats ceaselessly against and over the bank, and the waves break off masses of coral, flinging them on the platform and heaping them together, till at length a height is gained over which only the stormiest spring tides can sweep. You must not suppose that the whole reef is composed of delicate coral branches, such as you have seen in shops. This reef-coral is a very firm and solid kind, not red or pink, but white; and the perpetual grinding of the waves wears vast quantities of it into fine powder. The greater part of the reef below is composed of hard limestone, made out of the powdered coral; while over the surface, as soon as that surface is raised high enough, lies a thick layer of the same white powder the bright white sand of the coral-island beach. Our yellow sand is flinty in nature, but the sand of a coral-island is made chiefly of lime. Mingled with broken and ground-up coral of the reef there are great quantities of shells, small and large; lower down bound together into firm rock, Coral. 303 higher up loose and mixed together, more or less broken and pounded. When this stage in the reef-making is reached, the next step is that seeds of plants and trees are car- ried thither by the waves, and find a resting-place upon the little ledge. These spring into life, and grow quickly in the tropical climate. Now and then whole tree-trunks are borne to the island, having on them insects or lizards swept from some distant shore; and so life begins there. Sea-birds, too, settle from time to time; and land-birds, driven by gales from their native homes, take refuge in the slender belt of young trees soon growing along the reef. The coral-buildings are of different forms. Some- times they are found as islands, and sometimes as long narrow reefs. The islands vary much in shape, but the commonest and also the most remarkable kind is the Atoll. An Atoll is simply a ring of land or rather of coral surrounded by the deep ocean, with a lake or " lagoon " of shallow salt water in the middle. Upon this ring of land, with its inner and outer beaches of pure white sand, tall cocoanut-trees grow abun- dantly. Inside, the water is pure and still and 304 The World's Foundations. clear, often of a vivid green color. Outside, it stretches on every side to the horizon, profoundly blue; while around the slender circular strip of coral the fierce Pacific surge thunders unceasingly, breaking down, and tearing up, and grinding to powder, the materials of which the island is com- posed. And hour by hour the soft transparent polyps are at work, gathering fresh lime from the foaming breakers, closing breaches, repairing dam- ages, and saving the tiny ocean-oasis from destruc- tion. The coral-polyps certainly give a good illustration of the advantages of combined labor. Weak as they are individually, they are more than a match, united, for the mighty waves. Perhaps it is a little doubtful how far we may fairly speak of the reef-building coral-polyps as "individuals." They are bound so closely together in their life and labor, that if one takes in food, he nourishes his neighbors as well as himself. A certain traveller, who visited many of these islands in the Pacific Ocean, found that out of thir- ty-two, as many as twenty-nine had lagoons in their centres. The largest lagoon was thirty miles across, the smallest less than one mile. A,ll these islands were composed of living and Coral. 305 growing coral except one, and that one was singu- larly unlike the rest. It had no lagoon, but was about five miles long by one mile broad, having a flat surface, and upright cliffs all round of dead coral, fifty feet in height. This island seemed to have been forced up to its present level by some great underground thrust doubtless the result of volcanic forces. In another island also the lagoon had disappeared, apparently through the building up of coral all over it. In the atolls the ring of land has always at least one opening, through which ships may pass into the lagoon, and there find a safe harbor. The reason for there being this opening is not yet quite clearly un- derstood, though its convenience for sailors is plain enough. It is usually found to the windward of the island. The most probable explanation seems to be the need for some outlet for the fresh-water drainage of the island, resulting from rain. Where- ever that outlet might lie, coral-building would be checked, since coral-polyps have a strong aversion to fresh water. There are, in the Pacific, groups of coral islands which extend over hundreds of miles. But the islands composing such groups are usually far scat- tered, and for the most part small in size. 306 The World's Foundations. The Maldive Islands stretch through four hun- dred and seventy miles in one direction, the long chain having a rough breadth of fifty miles. A remarkable point about these islands is that most of them are not simple atolls, but atolls of atolls. A child's chain of dandelion stalks would best illustrate this. Each link is one small ring, and all the small rings joined together form one large ring. Some of these complex islands are from forty to ninety miles in diameter. The centre is occupied by the great chief lagoon, its clear waters varying in depth from about fifteen to fifty fathoms. But the ring of land surrounding, instead of being a plain broad reef, is a string of little rings or atolls, some of them from three to five miles across, and each having its own tiny lagoon. Occasionally a few more such tiny atolls are scattered about in the large central lagoon. Outside the ring of little atolls the ocean-waters become suddenly so deep as to be almost unfathomable. In addition to atolls and other islands, the polyps often build long reefs of coral. These are some- times called Fringing-reefs, and sometimes Barrier- reefs. Coral. 307 The fringing-reefs are so close inland as to be joined to the shore. The barrier-reefs lie farther out*to sea. They usually border an island, or run along the coast of a continent. Such reefs are often more or less wooded like the coral-islands, and sometimes they are very extensive. Off the Feejees there are huge barrier-reefs from five to fifteen miles wide. Near New Caledonia there are reef-grounds four hundred miles long. Beside Aus- tralian coasts there are barrier-reefs, fifty miles away from the shore, lasting with breaks for a dis- tance of one thousand miles. The coral structure in these reefs descends to a depth of thousands of feet. But how can this be? What about the fact above-stated that the reef-coral polyp cannot live below one hundred and twenty feet of water-depth ? Many theories have been put forward in explana- tion. At one time it was thought that the circular form of the atolls was probably caused by their being built upon the edge of a volcanic crater under the ocean, the said crater, filled with water, form- ing the shallow lagoon. This theory is not now so widely held. The present and more generally accepted idea is that of a gradual sinking of land or rather of the sea- 308 The World's Foundations. bottom throughout a great part of the Pacific Ocean. That the ocean-bottom does so sink, or has so sunk, slowly and quietly through ages past, is a matter about which we have no direct proof; but it may have been thus in the Pacific, as in Sweden and elsewhere. This theory explains the mystery better than any other yet offered. Suppose that in the deep Pacific Ocean a certain mountain once lifted its head, as a small island, above the water. All islands in mid-ocean are in reality hill-tops or mountain-summits. In the shallows around this little peak, rising out of the waves, the coral-polyps began to build what was then only a fringing-reef, close to the shore all round the island, except perhaps just where a stream of fresh water ran out to sea and hindered them. That is the manner in which fringing-reefs are formed, either round an island or along the mainland. The sea-bottom sinking year by year, very slowly yet steadily, carried down the mountain, and thus the little island with its fringing-reef sank also. The polyps continued busily building up their coral- bank to the level of low-water; but as the land sub- sided, a channel of slowly widening water ran be- Coral. 309 tween the coral and the shore. So the fringing-reef was turned into a barrier-reef. And this is how barrier-reefs are believed in many cases to have been formed. Still the centre island, with its surrounding bar- rier-reef, went on sinking lower and lower, very gradually, yet continuously. The little island grew smaller and smaller, but the channel of water be- tween it and the reef grew wider and wider. At length mere tiny peaks showed like tips in the centre. Then they disappeared at high-tide. By- and-by they were visible only at low-tide, and soon they had sunk below even the low-tide level. The barrier-reef thus became a circular reef, enclosing a little rocky pond of salt water. The rocky pond deepened, and shells and ground-up coral, together with newly-built coral, overspread the bottom, until at length the peaks were quite buried under branch- ing coral and white sand and an Atoll with its lagoon was fully complete. Whether this theory for, it is as yet only a theory serves for the mystery of the Maldive atolls of atolls, is not quite clear. So far as the ordinary atoll and reef are concerned, it seems to be a sufficient explanation. The thought has been suggested that, but for 310 The World's Foundations. some such slow and long-continued sinking, the Pacific would hardly continue to this day so bare of land, with its millions upon millions of coral- polyps ever at work, not to speak of volcanic island-building in many parts. Some atolls have been found seemingly in an earlier stage of the above history of their growth as, for instance, with a real island rising in the centre, of peaks not yet buried. If the ocean-bottom does thus sink, it must be at a very slow rate, not faster than the polyps are able to build up their coral; otherwise all the islands and reefs would soon disappear beneath the waves. From this proposed explanation it will be seen how coral-polyps may live only within a hundred and twenty feet of the surface, and yet how coral banks may reach downwards through thousands of feet. For once upon a time, if the explanation be true, that part of the coral now so deep down, lay near the surface of the ocean. As it sank lower the coral-polyps died by thousands, and the dead coral, ground into powder by the waves, became cemented into hard limestone; while higher up the still living corals carried on the building work, only in their Coral. 311 turn to be borne downwards, to die, and to be suc- ceeded above by fresh generations of animals. The speed at which coral may be formed is very uncertain, and very difficult to find out. Some islands and reefs are plainly receiving additions year by year. Others again are known to have been at a standstill for years, or even for centuries past. If the rate of growth in one spot could be defi- nitely settled, this would not prove that the rate there or elsewhere is now, or has been in past ages, always the same. Varying circumstances, such as the depth or shallowness, the warmth or coolness, the rough- ness or smoothness of the water, also its freedom from sediment and the amount of sunlight ad- mitted, would greatly help or hinder the advance of coral-building. Moreover that which would help one kind would hinder another, since the kinds of coral and their manner of growth differ greatly. To make allowances in any calculation for all these possibilities is not easy. In one island a ship's anchor could be seen lying under water at a depth of seven fathoms. It had belonged to a ship wrecked fifty years earlier. The 312 The World's Foundations, anchor was encrusted all over with coral, yet not so thickly as to hide its shape. This was slow growth. On the other hand, there was an islet in the Mal- dives having a fringe of cocoanut-trees upon it. The island was to a great extent washed away by some change in the ocean-currents, all the trees disappearing. In a few years a coral reef was built up upon the remains of the old island, entirely covering it. Also in Madagascar certain experiments were carefully made, and proof was obtained that coral may grow, under "favorable circumstances" at the rate of no less than three feet of thickness in about six months. This says much! How long the wide reaches of coral-banks and the multitudes of coral islands have taken to be built up from the ocean bottom we cannot tell. We only know that the rate of their growth lies beyond our power to determine. We only know that year by year these little creatures toil busily on, carrying out, all unconsciously to themselves, the plans of the Divine Architect. CHAPTER XXXI. STALACTITE. "I have made the earth, the man and the beast that are upon the ground." JER. xxvii. 5. THE Peat-formations or Peat-mosses of temperate countries ought not to be passed over without mention. Many fossil-remains have been found in them; and they offer as good an example of slow growth and gradual preparation on land as coral- building offers in the ocean. There are in some places Peat-mosses forty or fifty feet in thickness, and about fifty miles long by two or three broad. One-tenth part of Ireland is said to be covered with peat-mosses. They are made up of half-decayed vegetable matter, piled thickly together in damp and swampy ground. Peat is in fact a kind of imperfect coal, now and then coming very near to being true coal. 314 The World's Foundations. The making of peat is believed to have been, as a rule, extremely slow. The Hatfield Moss in York- shire was a forest eighteen hundred years ago, and it still holds specimens of tall fir-trunks. The slowness of peat-formation cannot fairly be taken as a measure by which to judge of the rate of coal-formation in the great Coal-Age, though sometimes so used. The peat-swamps belong to a comparatively cold atmosphere; while the coal- beds were, it is believed, the growth of a warm and moist climate. A means by which change in the Earth-crust occasionally comes about, and that suddenly, is through land-slips. Sometimes a large mass of earth, bearing with it trees and houses, will slide down a mountain-side for a considerable distance. Sometimes also, if a lower clay layer becomes very much softened by heavy rain or by the work of underground springs, the weight of the earth above will squeeze it out, the said earth sinking down into its place. Now and then an under- ground cavern, dug out by water, will suddenly collapse or close; the ground above sinking in consequence. Stalactite. 3 1 5 Many such cases have been known, and traces of the catastrophe are often visible long afterwards. In 1806 a terrible slide happened in Switzerland on the Rossberg. A large mass from the mountain- top slid downward, avalanche-like, burying several villages and spreading itself over many square miles of country. Such a landslip as this must leave its marks through centuries following. A few words, before the close, upon the subject of Stalactite and Stalagmite Caverns. In the chapter upon human remains it was stated that such remains have occasionally been found in caves, together with more numerous animal-remains of different kinds. These caves are commonly in countries where limestone-rock abounds. They are found in parts of England, of France, of Belgium. The hollows sometimes of very considerable ex- tent, and connected one with another by long passages were originally dug out by the action of underground streams, the Carbonic Acid in the water helping to wear away the rock. Probably after the digging-out period, a time followed during which rivers and streams flowed through the cav- erns, bringing thither supplies of sand or mud or 316 The World's Foundations. other deposits, together with occasional animal and vegetable remains fossil-plants and fossil-bones. Later still, through changes in the country either sudden or slow, either caused by fire under ground or by water above ground these streams may have been diverted into fresh channels, and the caves may have been left almost dry. Almost, but not quite. Water dripping gently from the roof has, in many instances, formed there- after curious cones and cylinders and icicle-shapes of different sizes, hanging downwards in a variety of graceful forms. Water alone would have no power to do this, but I have already spoken of abundant limestone- rocks near at hand. The dripping water, carrying a supply of lime from the said rocks, gradually drops or deposits this lime, and thus the lime- made cones and cylinders and icicle-shapes slowly grow. The downward hanging forms are called Stalac- tites, and very beautiful they often are. Fine ex- amples may be seen in the Stalactite caverns near Cheddar. The same description of lime-formation, left by trickling water, often covers the whole cavern-floor, and it is then called Stalagmite. Stalactite. 317 The bones of animals, and more rarely of men, found in such caves, are very commonly buried in or under the Stalagmite floor. It then becomes a question of interest how long the bones have lain there ? Now, of course, if we could say precisely how quickly the Stalagmite was made, and could meas- ure the exact depth of Stalagmite above any one bone, and could also be perfectly certain that the said bone had remained there quite undisturbed since the day when the animal died, we should then be able to calculate pretty closely how long ago that particular animal had lived. But unfortunately for such calculations, we have no such steadfast foundations to build upon. Though the thickness of stalagmite above any one bone is easily measured, we cannot be at all sure that the said bone has remained undisturbed since the animal died. It is often quite uncertain whether the animal died there at all, or whether the bone was afterwards washed into the cave. Some such caves appear to have been the regular haunts of wild beasts, who may have lived and died in them; but in most cases there is great uncertainty. Even if we may suppose the animal to have 318 The World's Foundations. actually died within the cave, we must still allow for the possibility of later disturbances. Heavy floods, taking place at different periods from severe rains or other causes, may have completely broken up and altered the original arrangement of bones on or in the floor.* Also, the uncertainty as to the rate of Stalac tite and Stalagmite growth makes such calcula- tions unreliable. For the making of Stalactite and Stalagmite, like the making of coral, is not a thing which goes on always exactly the same, century after century, but varies in speed with changing circumstances.f * "If several floods pass at different intervals of time through a sub- terranean passage, the last, if it has power to drift along fragments of rock, will also tear up any alternating stalagmite and alluvial beds that may have been previously formed As the same chasms may remain open throughout periods of indefinite duration, the species inhabiting a country may, in the meantime, be greatly changed, and thus the remains of animals belonging to very different epochs may become mingled together in a common tomb." LYELL. f "It is necessary to the formation of stalagmite that only so much water should be present as suffices to hold the carbonate of lime in solution. No deposit, therefore, takes place, if a stream be continuously flowing through the cavern; and even if a coating be deposited during a season of drought, this may easily be broken up again, if changes in the underground drainage of the country, or a rainy winter, cause the cavern to be again flooded." Ibid. Stalactite. 319 For awhile the Stalagmite formation may con- tinue steadily; but let a wet winter come, and the dripping water increase to a flowing stream; or let a dry summer come, and even the dripping cease; or let the supply of limestone slacken; and in each case the same result follows stalagmite ceases to form. To examine the stalagmite in a cavern, and to note the amount of its increase between two visits, is one thing. To assert that because it has grown so much in such a time, therefore it has always grown at the same rate in the past, and therefore, again, the whole layer has taken precisely so many years or centuries in forming, is quite another thing ! The first is the assertion of a proved fact. The sec- ond is the assertion of an unproved theory and of a theory for which no proof is possible. A good many guesses have been made as to the possible speed with which stalagmite may have been made in certain caves, where it has been found covering animal bones. For example, it was suggested in one instance that one-twentieth of an inch in two hundred and fifty years, or about one inch in five thousand years, might be the probable rate. Even if it could be proved, however, that the 320 The World's Foundations. stalagmite in that particular cave had been form- ing at this very slow rate in late years a doubt- ful matter, since some are inclined to think the growth there has long stopped altogether still we should have no proof whatever as to the quickness or slowness of its formation in the past. For examples of more rapid growth, as also of varying speed, are by no means rare. Certain deal boards were left exposed to such drippings near Durham. In the course of fifteen years, the stalactite encrusting their edges had become three-quarters of an inch thick. A gas-pipe was left thus exposed in Poole's Hole, near Buxton. In six months one-eighth of an inch of stalactite was formed upon it. After that the growth went on more slowly, increasing to nearly one inch and a quarter by the end of eighteen years. An iron nail was left in a forsaken lead-mine, where it caught a stalactite drip. In seventy-five years a quarter of an inch was formed upon it. Moreover, it is said that modern bottles have been found beneath a stalagmite floor, as deeply buried as mammoth-bones elsewhere. These facts simply serve to show the great ir- Stalactite. 321 regularity of stalagmite growth, and the uncer- tainty of any calculation founded upon a supposed regular rate of increase, since such a regular rate plainly does not exist. Thus step by step, briefly, as was needful, we have followed out the manner in which, to all ap- pearance, the Crust of the Earth was fashioned by the Creator; the manner in which, through ages past, He formed it to be the Home of Man; the manner in which He still moulds and alters it, here or there, as He sees fit. There is and must be very much that we cannot understand in the science of Geology. Nor will any really honest mind, still less any really great mind, hesitate to acknowledge the fact, and to bow low in conscious ignorance before the might of Him who alone knows all things. We are but spelling 'out the broken sentences of the rock-volume, written, as it is, in a strange language, with many missing paragraphs. What marvel if we make some mistakes ? But with patience and caution we may still press on. In the great Book of Nature much may be learnt about the God of Nature. Illegible though parts of the volume may be, yet if we read in a 322 The World's Foundations. loving and humble spirit, we shall find some les- sons to be clear; we shall find ourselves better acquainted than before with the boundless power of Him who " doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay His Hand, or say unto Him, What doest Thou?" INDEX. Age, Bronze and Iron, 203. Great Ice, 191. Ice, supposed Second, 207. of Fishes, 121. of Lower Animals or Lime- stone Building, ill. Post -Tertiary, 190. Stone, 203. Ages, Three great, in. Ammonites, 156. Mummulites and cor- als, 182. Amphibians, 144. Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms, 93- Kingdom, Table of, 100. Remains in caves, 317. Animalcules, 161. Animals, plants and rocks, 96. In England and France in Third Period, 183. Architect, The Divine, 209. Artesian wells, 236. Atolls, or rings of coral, 303. Barrier-reefs, 306. Bath, hot springs of, 294. Bay of Fundy mud-flats, 250. Bell -Rock Lighthouse, 238. Bird-skeleton, 156. Books, The two great, 87. Boulder-clay or drift, 72. British Isles, formation of, 180. Chalk Age and Secondary Period, close of, 169. Geography of, 166. And Flint, 164. Time in building, 165. Chalk Cliffs, 19, 44. Formation in America, 160. Making Age, 159. Cheddar Caverns, 316. Classification in the Kingdoms, 94. Climate of earth, third period days, 179. Coal, 48. Age, climate, 140. Description of forest scene, 130. Beds in South Wales, 139. Preparation, 129, 155. Seams, 135. Cold, signs of in early third period rocks, 181. Cone of a Volcano, 261. Coral, 122, 155. Deep-sea, 300. Formation, speed of, 311. Kinds of, 300. Making, 112. Polyp, The, 299. Coral-Reef building, 301. Crater of a volcano, 261. Creation, Bible record of, 2IO. Days of, 86. Of the world, 103. Theories of explanation, 210. Crumbling cliffs, II. Crystallization, 8. Deltas, lake and ocean, 244. River, 243. Diatoms, 47, Diluvial soil, 75. Disturbances among the rocks, 114. Divisions in nature, 94. Drift or till, 191. 324 Index. Earl of Mar's Punch-bowl, 227. Geology, Difficulty of reading rec Earth, In earliest days, 108. ord, 63. Preparation of, for Man, Meaning of, I. 89. Much that cannot be un- What made of, I . derstood, 321. Earthquakes, 36. Cause of, 277. The Volume of, 7. Geysers, 295. General effects of, 284. American, 297. In Calabria, 281. Icelandic, 296. Caraccas, 280. Glacial Age, The, 83. Chili, 278. Glacier-holes at Lucerne, 228. Cutch, 279. Glaciers, 77, 252. Jamaica, 284. Greenland, 256. Lisbon, 282. Mont Blanc, 255. New Zealand, 278. Movements of, 252. Earth's Crust, 2. Theory of, 193. Changes in, II. Greenland ice-foot, 260. Disturbances in, 26. Ground, Rising and sinking of, 133. Gradual movements of, 288. Heat, Underground, 37. Erratics, 74. Hot springs, 294. Etna, 267. Human relics, 201. Remains in caves, 206. "Faults," 68, 278. Feejee Islands, 307. Ice-action, Possible, 172. Ferns, 141. Fire, and water, 39. Icebergs, 80, 254. Possible in Third Period, Fountains of, 276. 181. Lakes of, 275. Spitzbergen, 259. Fish-fossils, 127. Insect-remains, 125. Fishes, 156. Island, Formation of a coral, 303. The first, 118. Floods, Time of, 195. Lagoons, 303. Floor of Pacific Ocean supposed to Lake of Geneva, Delta of, 244. sink, 291. Land-sinkings. 21. Forests, 125, 140. Formation, 65. Land-slip, 314. On Rossberg, 315. Fossil rain-prints, 70. Fossils, different kinds of, 23, 57. in rocks, 47. on mountain -tops, 25. Vispbach, 229. Life, 96. New, Period begun, 175. Widespread destruction Df, Vegetable, In coal, 142. 171. Fringing-reefs, 307. Limestone, 46. London and Paris basins, 180. Galongoon, volcano of, 269. Ganges and Brahmapootra, The Maldine Islands, 306. 247. Geological Ages, Table of, 219. Mammals, 182. First, 157. Inde*,. 325 Mammoths and Mastodons, 198. Mer de Glace, 255. Rising of land in Sweden, 290. River Simeto, 230, Middle Life period, 147. Two beds of a, 232. Mississippi, Delta of, 248. Rock, Alternate layers of, 140. Monte Nuovo, 272. And Fossils, Third Period, Moraines, 78, 258. 177. Mountain meal, 48, Aqueous, 22, Mountains, Upheaval, 146, 178. and Igneous, 31. Mud, Nature of, at bottom of At- lantic Ocean, 162. Building in past ages, 52. Different kinds of, 6. Mud-banks, 243, Earliest known, 107. Flint, Clay and Lime, 40. Nations, History of periods, 203. Nature, Powers of, 34. Foldings and bending, 65. Fossiliferous, 22. Niagara receding, 231. Plutonic and Metamorphic, Nile, The Delta of, 246. So- Norfolk, Demolished towns of, 240. Nummulites, 177. Primary or "Ancient Ani- mal," no. Old sea-beaches, 20. Secondary and Transition,32. Sedimentary, 16. " Organs," 96. Strata, chain of records, 62. Stratified and Unstratified, 8. Past ages of preparation for Man, 89. Peat-mosses, 313. Building up of, 18. Thickness of, 61. Slowness of Formation, 314. What is meant by, Periods and Ages, 192, 218. 10. Hants, Change of, 167. What made of, 41. Flowering, 167. Volcanic, 30. Flowerless, 124. Wearing away by streams, Tropical, 179. 226. Po and Adige, The rivers, 245. Pot-holes, 228. Sand-bars, 243. Primary Period, End of, 145. Sandstone, New Red, 121. Saurians, 151. Quadrupeds and Whales, Ancient, Scotch "till," 72, 1 88. Scratched Stones, probable explana- Huge, 195. tion, 79. Sea-weeds and sea-creatures of Si- Rains wearing away the earth, lurian days, 115. 234- Seas and continents, III. Reptiles, 148, 160. Sediment and detritus, 15. Birds and Ammonites, Shells, sea and fresh water, 176, 168. Shetland Islands, action of the First, 132, 144. waves on, 238. Reuss in Pass of St. Gotthard, 228. Sigillaria, 143. Rhizopods, 43. And Stigmaria, 137. and Diatoms, 165. Sinking of land in Greenland, 291, Rhone, Delta of the, 244. Sea-bottom, 308. 326 Index. Stages in existence of heavenly bod- Vegetable Kingdom, Table of, ies, 104. 101. Probable in preparation of Vesuvius, 271. the earth, 104. Volcanic eruptions, 38, Stalactite and stalagmite caves, 315. Stalagmite formation, speed of, 319. Volcano, A, 261. Volcanoes, Active, Dormant and Steam, Power of, 294. Extinct, 262. Stones scratched and scored, 71. Different kinds of erup- Strata, Arrangement of, 26, 54. tions, 262. Classification of, 58. Hawaiian, 273. Table of, 59. Icelandic, 265. Stratum, and "Layer," 64. Mexican, 264. Sub-kingdoms and classes, 97, Sussex, Inundations of, 241. Nearness of, to the Ocean, 293. Of the Andes, 263. Temple of Jupiter Serapis, 292. Theory, what is meant by, 5. Water, and Fire, actions of, 214. Torrents, work of, 13, Digging out of passages by, Tracks of Amphibians and Rep- 3I5- tiles, 153. Running, work of, 225. free-trunks in Mines, 137. Waves, and cracks, 282. Trees, Fossiliferous, 143. frilobites, 117. Work done by, 302. Wear of Cliffs round Britain, 237. and Lobsters, 128. World-history before Adam, 84. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it wss DOfrowoo. UCLA/SEL INTERLI3RARYLO; SEP 2 3 1997 DUE TWO irui D'MCU/ACI r OCT 1 4 1997 SEL/EMS LIBRARY NS The RALPH D. REED LIBRARY ^ NT OK GKOLOC.Y . ORNIA LOS ANGELES, CALIF. T3E LIBRARY UNi\ .FORNIA LOS AiNGELES QE28 QgSw Gibe rue - 1882 The world's foundations. UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 001 092 250 QS28 G35ir 1882