THE STRANGE ADVENTURES
OF A PEBBLE

STRANGE ADVENTURES IN NATURE'S WONDERLANDS

THE
STRANGE ADVENTURES
OF A PEBBLE

BY

HALLAM HAWKSWORTH

AUTHOR OF "THE ADVENTURES OF A GRAIN OF DUST"

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON

Copyright, 1921, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
A

THE SCRIBNER PRESS

PREFACE

The purpose of this little book is to present the chief features in the strange story of the pebbles; and so of the larger pebble we call the earth. It is hoped that readers of various ages will be entertained, without suspecting that they are being taught.

Several things led the author to believe that such a book might be wanted.

(a) The circumstances under which it was written.

(b) The fact that there seemed to be an opportunity for improvement not only in the popular presentation of scientific topics but in the character and method of review questions and suggestions following such topics in school texts.

(c) Experience has shown that pictures may be made to perform a much more vital function in teaching than is usually assigned to them in the text-books.[1]

[1] On this subject I cannot do better, perhaps, than quote from an article on "The Picture Book in Education," contributed to the New York Evening Post:

"We learn more easily by looking at things than by memorizing words about them. The principle, of course, holds whether the image which the eye receives comes from the object itself or only from the picture of the object. Therefore we should learn to read pictures as well as books.

"New York has long recognized the added efficiency in the teaching process to be obtained from the use of pictures. The Division of Visual Instruction, established thirty years ago, has an international reputation for the extent of its equipment, the simplicity of its methods, and the excellence of its results."

(d) In the particular field to which this story relates comparatively little has been written either for reading in the family circle or for use in the school; although the relation of physiography, not only to human history and political and commercial geography but to the whole immense realm of natural science, is so basic and its great principles and processes so striking in their appeal to curiosity and our sense of the grand and the dramatic.[2]

[2] Commenting on the need of popular literature dealing with earth science, Doctor Shaler says:

"In no other fields are large and important truths so distinctly related to human interests so readily traced; yet the treatises dealing with these truths are few in number and generally recondite."

What here appear as chapters were originally little talks for the evening entertainment of the juvenile members of a certain family and the neighboring children, who were attracted by what came to be known as the "pebble parties," during the season at Mount Desert Island. They are here given in substantially the form in which they first saw the light. While they proved entirely intelligible to boys and girls of eight and ten they seemed equally interesting to the older members of the audience, including a youth of eighteen in his last year of high school, whose comments, in the language of his caste, deserve to share the credit for whatever of whimsical humor and colloquial style the author may have succeeded in incorporating into the narrative.

The familiar tone, the number and variety of the chapters, the sub-heads and marginal captions and the character and treatment of the illustrations have a similar origin. They represent the variety of aspects under which it was found necessary to present the facts in order to hold a capricious audience whose attendance and attention were wholly voluntary.

The use of unfamiliar words and scientific terms has been avoided as much as possible, consistent with the educational purpose of the book. It is to be remembered that educators do not consider it good practice to omit all words which children cannot understand at sight; the theory being that it is by the judicious introduction of words not current on the playground that the intellectual interests and capacities of children are enlarged. With regard to scientific topics (it is further argued) a large proportion of the classics of science written for the general reader and which boys and girls of fourteen and upward should be able to read easily and with pleasure—Shaler, Darwin, and Wallace, for example—contain quite a few scientific terms; and these it would be well that young people learn from context or definition in their previous reading in works of a more elementary nature.

Moreover, while younger children will read a book the general character of which interests them, even though they do not understand every word or get all the thoughts in it, sophisticated youths of the high-school age will have none of it, if they suspect that they are being talked down to. In the story of the pebble the aim, accordingly, has been not only to make a book that young people will not outgrow but one that will be of some interest to adults, particularly to travellers.

Not only in the text is special emphasis laid on the interpretation of landscape, but the character, treatment, and arrangement of the illustrations is intended to train the eye to read the story of the earth drama as recorded in the forms of valley, mountain, field, and shore. And—since the earth is not, after all, a mere geological specimen—these illustrations include reproductions of paintings, scenery as interpreted by the poet and the artist.

To create an appropriate atmosphere and so add to the vividness of conception, the twelve chapters each deal with a seasonable subject.

Relation to the Text-Book

The relation of this book to the formal study of physiography or geology in the schools will be apparent. The classified and exhaustive treatment of the text-book, while so admirably adapted to organize knowledge already acquired, or reward an appetite already aroused, is not at all adapted for creating this appetite in the first place; a thing so essential to true progress in education. For example, in a text-book, the many aspects of glaciers and their work, which are here distributed in a number of sections (as the discovery of these aspects was distributed in time), are usually dealt with in a single chapter or series of chapters, whose nature the reader at once gathers from the title, "The Work of the Glaciers."

The young reader or school pupil is thus deprived of the element of surprise, of the pleasure of following an unfolding mystery, which was at once the inspiration and reward of men of science to whom we owe these discoveries.

If left to the text-book alone, the student acquires his facts too rapidly and too easily. The result is a loss of both pleasure and profit. The movements of the glaciers and the nature of the movement, which gave Agassiz seven years of keen delight to ascertain, the pupil acquires through his text-book in something like seven minutes, and without either the pleasure or the profit of Agassiz' gradual and inductive acquirement of this knowledge.

In other words, to begin the study of a given science by means of a text-book, without previously arousing interest in the subject, is to assume a greater zeal on the part of school pupils and college students than, it is reasonable to assume, was possessed by the scientists themselves. It was the attraction of the unknown rather than the rapid acquirement of the known that drew them on to their grand discoveries, their illuminating generalizations.

In recording the pebble's story the endeavor has been to cause the reader to come upon the data on which these generalizations were based, piece by piece, here a little and there a little—as did the scientists themselves.

Interesting as the mere facts of physiographic science finally become to the trained scientist they make little appeal either to the average boy or the average adult, if he must first come in contact with them as they are presented in the text-book; classified, catalogued, labelled in scientific terms and laid away (as it seems to him) in chapter, section, and paragraph, like specimens in a museum.

Since this book is concerned mainly with landscapes and the story of the forces that helped to shape them it does not undertake to deal with mineralogy. Within the fields thus defined it is believed that the larger facts, the great moving causes of things, have been covered as thoroughly as they are in the average elementary text-book. In addition, subjects in great variety are touched upon which do not come within the province of the text-book, but are such as naturally suggest themselves in the broader and richer discussion of such topics in the conversation of cultivated people.

Hide and Seek in the Library

Since the whole purpose of the school is to prepare for the larger world of life and books outside the school, special attention is invited to the department of questions and suggestions following each chapter. As indicated in the introduction to the first of the series, an effort has been made to capitalize the fact that young people enjoy conundrums and curious quests in the field of books quite as well as mere passive reading.

The treatment is somewhat discursive, and in this and other respects is intended to be more like the conversation of cultivated parents with their children than like the review questions of a text-book; the review element being incidental, in recalling the topics out of which these questions and suggestions grow. The correlations in the most modern texts lead into equally wide and varied fields.

If he has succeeded in the aim thus indicated, the author believes this department may easily prove one of the most interesting as well as educatively useful features of the work.

H. H.

CONTENTS

THE ILLUSTRATIONS

In furtherance of the idea referred to in the preface, that a far more effective use may be made of pictures in teaching than is usual, a very extended use has been made of them in "The Strange Adventures of a Pebble," and, moreover, these pictures have been made to talk, as it were, by means of extended analysis and comment upon their significant features; this for the double purpose of teaching important facts, as only pictures can teach, and of stimulating the invaluable habit of observation and of logical reasoning about things observed.

One of the main purposes of the book, as stated in the preface, is to stimulate interest in further reading and study on the many subjects to which it relates.

The author wishes to make special acknowledgment of the co-operation of the editor of St. Nicholas and the following publishers in supplying the illustrations on the pages indicated:

The Macmillan Co.: [11], [29], [36], [41], [52], [83], [108], [121], [132], [145], [152], [168], [173], [195], [221], [225], [226], [235], [240], [249], [254], [257]. The Century Co.: For the following from the St. Nicholas magazine: [38], [47], [70], [184], [199].

D. Appleton and Co.: [12], [22], [60], [97], [102], [136], [141], [224], [236], [241], [243], [245], [247], [252], [257]. G. P. Putnam's Sons: [59], [105], [147]. E. P. Dutton & Co.: [157]. Henry Holt & Co.: [37], [84], [149], [193], [207], [250]. Silver Burdett Co.: [28]. World's Work: [79]. Geological Survey: [13], [23], [114], [130], [194], [238]. Wisconsin Survey: [33]. Encyclopædia Britannica: [256].

THE STRANGE ADVENTURES
OF A PEBBLE

CHAPTER I

(JANUARY)

In the beginning the earth was without form and void.

—Genesis 1:1-2.

IN THE BEGINNING

I. How the Worlds and Myself Were Born

I've been through fire and water, I tell you! From my earliest pebblehood the wildest things you could imagine have been happening to this world of ours, and I have been right in the midst of them.

HOW MR. APOLLO TURNED ON THE LIGHT

The first scenes of all in my strange, eventful history remind me of the old Greek story about Apollo and that boy of his—Phaeton. Apollo's business, you remember, was to take the sun through the skies every day in his golden chariot, so that people could see to get about. It was a ticklish job, as the horses were fiery. As a rule, however, things went fairly well. To be sure, there were overdone days occasionally, just as there are now. Then the crops would wither and the birds and brooks stop singing. This, as the little Greek boys and girls believed, was because Apollo's horses ran too near the earth.

HOW MR. APOLLO TURNED ON THE LIGHT

Behold the sun-god starting on his daily round! Aurora, Goddess of the Dawn, precedes him scattering flowers, the lovely colors of the morning sky. The other figures are the early hours.

The Greek poets used to play with these myth stories a good deal, changing them to suit their poetic fancy. Theocritus, for example, in a beautiful fragment that has come down to us, paints this picture of the breaking day:

"Dawn, up from the sea to the sky,

By her fleet-footed steeds was drawn."

You see, according to this poet's conception, Miss Dawn had a chariot of her own.

But nothing serious happened until one time Phaeton persuaded father to let him drive the sun chariot for a day. The horses, feeling at once a new and weak hand on the reins, tore out of the regular road and went dashing right and left. They even got so near the North Pole that the ice began to melt. They fairly flew down toward the earth, set the mountains smoking, and dried up all the springs and most of the rivers.

THEN THINGS BEGAN TO HAPPEN

They dried up a certain great lake, so that there is to this day the Libyan Desert in Africa, where this lake used to be. They made the very sea shrink so that there were "wide naked plains where once its billows rose."

Finally Mother Earth called on Jupiter Pluvius, as god of thunder, rain, and storms, to stop Phaeton and the runaways and put out the fire.

Struck by a bolt of lightning poor Phaeton fell headlong from the skies, and a world-wide rain put out the world-wide fire.

From a cameo by Da Vinci

THE FALL OF PHAETON

(Museum, Florence)

Now, would you believe it, this queer old Old World story may really be true in its way. Of course there never was a sun god and no spoiled boy who did just that thing; although many spoiled boys have tried to set the world on fire and failed because they thought it would be so easy.

But the earth really has been on fire in a sense; that is, has melted from the heat. And in parts where you would least suspect—the rocks. There's where I got into it. And some of these rocks, not more than ten miles[3] from where you live, are either still molten, or continue to melt from time to time; as you can see when lava comes pouring from volcanoes, such as those of Hawaii.

[3] Straight down, of course.

In the days of the Apollo story most men still thought the earth was the centre of the universe; that the sun, moon, and stars moved around it. But Pythagoras, one of the Greek philosophers, had formed a general notion of the truth that the earth is only one planet in a great system. Then, along in the Sixteenth Century, came Copernicus, and by mathematical calculation—he was a fine hand at figures—began to find out things that showed the wise old Greek had made a happy guess. Then Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and others, each working on different parts of the problem, finally settled the question. They found that there are just worlds of worlds, and that ours is only one of them.

About the time of the American Revolution a great French mathematician, Laplace, worked out a story of the origin of the earth which is, briefly, this:

What we know now as the solar system—the sun with its attendant worlds—was once a single big ball of fiery gas, a nebula. As this nebula cooled it shrank, and as it shrank it whirled faster because it had a smaller track in which to turn, and with an equal amount of force would, of course, get around oftener. The faster it whirled the more the outside of it tended to fly off, as water flies off a whirling grindstone or as a stone flies from a sling. This centrifugal or "fly-away" force was greatest at the sun's equator, and it threw off big rings. Afterward, around some centre of greater density in these rings, the gaseous particles in the rest of the ring gathered, so forming spheres. Then some of the spheres themselves threw off rings in the same way which became what are called satellites. The moon, which is our satellite, Laplace supposed to have originated in this way. The ring which Saturn still wears he thought would some day become a satellite.

By permission of the Mount Wilson Observatory

WATCHING THE MAKING OF WORLDS

At first you won't see anything very striking about this picture, perhaps; but doesn't it give you something of a thrill to be told that you are here looking not only at the making of a world, but of worlds of worlds? A whole solar system! In the course of unthinkable time that big, round ball in the center will be the sun, and what appear to be little knots wrapped close around it—they are really far from each other and from the sun—will become rounded worlds like ours. They will be forced into roundness by their own gravity, pulling toward their centers. They don't look any farther apart than the strands in a little sister's braided hair, do they? But remember how small this picture is compared with what it represents. What here show as little dark lines, separating the embryo worlds, are in reality vast spaces, like those you see between the stars at night—millions and millions and millions of miles!

So, you see, the myth story of Phaeton foreshadowed, in a way, the science story of Laplace. For, according to the Laplace theory, the world was on fire; and a big rain storm, lasting for ages, with plenty of thunder and lightning, did help put it out.

This theory of Laplace was long accepted as the true one. Indeed, it was only yesterday, comparatively, that other explanations were offered as to how we came to have a world to stand on. The broadest of these new theories—the one that undertakes to explain the most—is that of Professor Chamberlin, of the University of Chicago.

THE SUN AND HIS PEBBLE WORLDS

However the worlds of our solar system may have been made, when they were done there was the sun in the centre and his worlds travelling around him in their ordered orbits. Nearest the sun is Mercury. Then Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus; then, finally, Neptune nearly 3,000,000,000 miles away and with an orbit so big that Christmas comes only once in 60,000 years!

YOU CAN SEE THESE WORLDS IN THE MAKING

Owing to the more powerful telescopes of to-day, and the amount of exploring among the worlds that has been going on since the time of Laplace, several things have been discovered that have brought his theory into question. For one thing, many more nebulæ have been found in space than were known when Laplace worked out his great conception, and among them all not one has been found with a central mass surrounded by a ring. Moreover, our sharp-eyed telescopes show that Saturn's ring, which Laplace thought was a solid mass, is really made up of a great number of small satellites: baby worlds. The greater number of these nebulæ are like the ones you see in the illustration on [page 5]. They consist of very bright centres with spirals streaming out from opposite sides. Just take a look at the picture. Doesn't the shape of those spirals suggest that the central mass is whirling? And notice the little white lumps here and there. The thinner, veil-like portions of the mass, as well as the "lumps," are supposed to be made of particles of matter, but the lumps to be more condensed. All the particles, big and little, are known to be revolving about the central mass, much as the earth revolves about the sun. The little white lumps, or knots, in the filmy skein are supposed to be worlds in the making. Being larger than the other particles, they draw the smaller to them, according to the same law of gravitation which makes every unsupported thing on earth fall to the ground, because the earth is so much bigger than anything there is on it. Since these bright little lumps behave so much like the worlds we know as planets, and yet are relatively so small, they are called planetessimals, or "little planets." So Professor Chamberlin's idea of the origin of worlds is known as the "planetessimal theory."

HOW YOU CAN WATCH THE WORLD TURN ROUND

Timepieces, you know, are really machines for keeping track of the apparent movement of the sun. Here is a device, as simple as a sun-dial and much simpler than a clock, by which you can record the actual motion of the earth. Sprinkle the surface of the water in a bowl with chalk dust. On this, sift from a piece of paper powdered charcoal or pencil dust, so as to make a clean-cut band extending across the centre and over the edge of the bowl. In the course of several hours you will find that the black band has swept round from east to west, because the water has stood still while the bowl has been carried from west to east by the whirling world.

According to this theory the earth was once a mere baby world like those white lumps, and grew by gathering in its smaller neighbors from time to time by the power of gravitation. The larger it grew the more particles of solid matter it could draw to itself. Then it drew larger masses, for with increased mass came an increased pull of gravity. In the same way the earth is still growing, for it is thought that the shooting stars or meteors we see at night are little planets being gathered in.

II. How the Continents Came Up Out of the Sea

And before I got to be myself at all, while I was still only a part of the big pebble called the Earth, your geography and I lay at the bottom of the sea.

For ages and ages!

This is one of the stories you will find in the literature of science, of how, along with North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia—have I left out any?—I came to land and brought your geography with me.

I remember hearing a pretty young lady say, once upon a time:

"There," said she, "I'm through with geography forever!"

You see, although she had passed with marks around 90, she still had the idea that geography is a book. You and I know, of course, that the real geography isn't a book at all. It's the world itself.

PUTTING THE CONTINENTS ON THE GLOBE

But there was a time when there was no land. It was all water, and the continents were lifted into their places, much as you model a continent in making a relief map; they were sketched out and then filled in. North America, for example. First of all up came that mass in the northeast in what is now Canada; the Laurentian Highlands, as they are called in your geography. They rose very, very slowly, you understand, only a few feet in a thousand years; for Nature has all the time there is and never hurries. These highlands (they are really granite mountains worn down), along with the other rock formations of our continent, are supposed to be the oldest land on the earth. The continents of Europe and the rest were born later. So you see Columbus didn't discover the New World at all; he really came from the New World and discovered the Old!

Next after the highlands north of the St. Lawrence up came the tops of the mountains you see running along the eastern coast, what we now call the Appalachians. Then the Rocky Mountains began to raise their heads and looked eastward toward their brother mountains across a great mediterranean sea, the bottom of which is now the Mississippi Valley. Mediterranean means "middle of the land."

HOW YOUR GEOGRAPHY ROSE OUT OF THE SEA

ADMITTING NEW STATES TO THE MAP

Wisconsin, into which I moved from the Laurentian Highlands in later years, was on the lower end of a long, thin tongue of rock reaching out from these highlands to the southwest. While Wisconsin went on growing, the Alleghanies came up and brought some Middle Atlantic geography with them. Up with all these early settler mountains came, in the course of time, the beginnings of neighbor States. All these big, barren rocks (as they were then), rising and ever rising, age after age, spread more surface to the sun. And the sun, and the wind, and the frost, followed by the lowest forms of plant life—the Adams of the vegetable world—gradually worked the surface of the rock into soil; and so, as we may say, got ready for the spring plowing.

LANDS THE SEA HAS SWALLOWED

Parts of the continents as they used to be but which are now beneath the waters are here shown. Compare this with the globe map in your geography. It is estimated that there are 10,000,000 square miles of this land. You'll hear more about this swallowing habit of the sea in [Chagter X]; but, as you will learn, there's nothing to be frightened about.

By this constant rising and building on of the soil the foundations of our States grew out toward one another in order, according to the constitution of things, "to form a more perfect union." The United States, at a time which, we may say, corresponds to "The Expansion Period" in your school history, grew southward from Wisconsin and westward from the Appalachians until they made continuous land; and there was your Ohio and Indiana and the rest of the North Central group. Below, toward the south, were more big stone islands here and there, the first sketches or blockings out of the Southern States. Florida seems to have been added later, as a final touch; an afterthought, as one of my Wisconsin neighbors puts it. And it was much enlarged by those remarkable little world builders, the corals. Mexico and Central America, of course, are a part of the Rocky Mountain system.

From Gilbert and Brigham's "An Introduction to Physical Geography." By permission of D. Appleton and Company

BUT WON'T WE GO UNDER AGAIN?

These little people of the sea-floor furnish one of the most assuring evidences we have that although the continents rose out of the sea, they will never go under the sea again. These are shell creatures found in the slime dredged from the bottom of the deepest parts of the sea. The shells of creatures that live near shore are found in abundance in our rocks, but these types are found only in the deepest seas. So, since the deep down-wrinklings of the earth that make the sea-basins have never risen, it is probable they never will; and consequently that the up-wrinkles—the continents—will continue to stay above the waters.

It's a wonderful old story, isn't it? But more wonderful still, it always seemed to me, is the story of how they found all this out.

Who do you suppose first told about it? The last people you would ever think of, I'm sure—the oysters!

WHAT THE OYSTERS TOLD XENOPHANES

It sounds like a passage from "Alice in Wonderland," or "Through the Looking-Glass," doesn't it? But it's a fact. Away back, more than 2,000 years ago, a wise Greek called Xenophanes, who lived in a place called Colophon, and so was called Xenophanes of Colophon, said that he thought the rocks of the mountain sides must once have been under the sea because of the oyster shells that were found embedded in many of them.

HOW THE OYSTERS TOLD THE GREAT SECRET

Here is a good example of the thing that led wise old Xenophanes of Colophon to make the startling assertion that the mountains were once at the bottom of the sea. These are the shells of oysters embedded in limestone—which, by the way, the shells of the oysters themselves helped make—and this piece of stone is from the top of a high mountain.

"For," said Xenophanes of Colophon, "how else could the oyster shells have got there? Who ever heard of oysters climbing a mountain?"

Another evidence that lands come up out of the sea is this: Even before the days of Scott and Maryatt and Fenimore Cooper, men—and, of course, boys—were interested in caves that face upon the sea. They are such jolly places for pirates, and for boys playing pirate, and for mermaids drying their hair. It was plain that down where the waves in storms could reach them the sea itself bored out these caves. But how about those caves in the cliffs high above the waves? The sea must have made them, too, once upon a time when the land was lower in the water. Then the land was raised.

Still more striking was the fact that not only caves but old sea beaches were found on hill and mountain slopes far from the sea, sometimes hundreds of miles inland. You can tell the old beaches by their shape and the way in which the pebbles are sorted by size, just as you find them on beaches to-day.

THE BAKED APPLE AND THE BULGING WORLD

The causes of the rise and fall of the sea coasts are many, and there are things about these movements not yet understood. By what wonderful machinery, then (we might naturally ask), were the continents themselves lifted out of the sea? To this, which would seem much the harder question of the two, the answer is simple; as simple as a baked apple. You know an apple that goes into the oven with a smooth, neat skin comes out covered with wrinkles. Now suppose, instead of a little, hot apple, covered with a thin skin, you have a big, hot earth covered with a thick crust of stone, and the inside of the earth shrinking all the time as the inside of the apple shrank away from its skin. The rock skin would wrinkle, and the wrinkles, rising out of the seas that then covered it everywhere, would make continents.

THE RISE AND FALL OF JUPITER SERAPIS

In this account of the ups and downs of land and sea I must tell you the story of Jupiter Serapis. In the days of the Romans this temple, for his honor, stood on the seashore near Naples. Of that temple only three pillars remain, but they answer a very important question. On these pillars, over twenty feet above sea-level, is a belt of holes bored in the stone by a certain shelled sea-creature, one of the barnacle family; so evidently these pillars must, at some time, have sunk, as shown in the second picture, and then risen again, as shown in the third, which represents them as they stand to-day.

Another interesting thing is that the third picture—observe—shows a volcano that isn't in the other two. Following a series of earthquake shocks in 1538 the earth opened and out popped hot stones and ashes and built themselves into a small volcano right before everybody; for it was all done in a short time, and you may be sure the frightened people kept their eyes on it, and they named it Monte Nuovo, which is Italian for "New Mountain."

"And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so."

According to the planetessimal theory the way in which the seas were made was this:

Owing to the collision—the "bang"—of the planetessimals against the earth, and against each other as they met at the "terminal station," heat was generated. The compression, the squeezing together, of the earth from its own weight—the gravity pull of the whole mass toward the centre—generated still more heat, and the heat and pressure drove the gases out of the rock. These gases included hydrogen and oxygen. These two gases cooling and combining themselves, in a way they have, became water, and there were other gases, such as nitrogen and carbon gas, that helped to make the air.

WHEN THE SEAS WERE ALL IN THE SKY

At first the water was in the form of dense clouds of overhanging vapor which, growing bigger and bigger, finally fell in rain. The heat, made by the pressure of the outside of the earth toward the centre as the earth kept growing, caused volcanic explosions. But there were far more volcanoes in those early days when the earth was settling down, and being "settled up," as it were, by these energetic pioneers in the fields of space—the planetessimals—and the surface became pitted with craters. In these great catch basins the rain was stored, and, as for ages the rain kept falling faster than the vapor rose from the earth, many of these bodies of water united, and so formed the lakes, the river systems, the oceans, and the seas.

THE FOUR GREAT FEATURES OF THE BIBLE STORY

All of which, while it differs so much from the theory of Laplace, does not affect the Bible outline of the origin of the earth. For these four great things must still have been: (1) an earth without form, and void; (2) a great deep; (3) upon its face darkness from the continuing masses of black rain-laden clouds which overhung it and shut out the sun; (4) the final dividing up of supply between the vapor of the clouds ("the waters above the earth") and "the waters upon the earth," so that at last the dark cloud curtain disappeared, and the sun began to rule the day. "Let there be light."

But good-by to Phaeton and the story of an original glowing ball which cooled off on the outside. If the earth grew bit by bit instead of being whirled off in one fiery mass by the sun it was never any hotter than it is now, if as hot. It grew hot by being pressed together by its own weight, and by the blows of additional little worlds as they fell upon it.

But on one thing everybody agrees, that the rocks, as you go toward the earth's centre, have been and still are in a molten state; that this rock, when it cools, becomes granite, all full of little crystals like a lump of sugar, and that the Granites are one of the F. F. E.'s.[4]

[4] First Families on Earth.

I, as you see, am a Granite. So, besides going through fire and water—yes, and ice, as you will learn—and having many strange and wearing adventures both by land and sea—I'm "awfully" old. Older than you think. I looked it up in the family record called the "Geological Column"—just the other day. That column gives my age as "80+." This means I'm 80,000,000 years old, going on 81! (The plus sign, in geology language, means "going on"; or, "and then some," as a certain slangful high school freshman puts it.)

But I don't think I show my age. Do you?

HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY

Who wants to sit and be talked to all the time? When boys and girls are playing games, the greatest pleasure is in taking part, and it's the same way in the Wonderland of Books. Books mean most to those who "get into the game"; who help chase after the answers to things. This hunting for answers up and down among the books is one of the interesting games we're going to play; and those of you who don't come in will miss a lot of fun. That's all I've got to say! Let's begin like this:

In the Greek myth stories what else was Mr. Apollo supposed to do for the world and its people besides turning on the light?[5]

[5] Answers to all these questions at the ends of chapters will be found in books you can easily get hold of—encyclopædias, dictionaries, and school-books; or books usually found in home, school, or public libraries. Words in parenthesis or italics indicate the headings where the information referred to will be found.

Why doesn't the force of the earth, whirling along as it does at 19 miles a second, cause the wind to blow us all away? (Earth.)

What is the difference between a planet and a sun?

How does the earth compare in size with its brother planets of the sun family?

How often would Christmas come around if we lived on the moon?

What causes different phases of the moon?

Why may we be said to have eclipses of the moon every month?

"Moon" and "month" sound a good deal alike when you come to think of it. Don't you wonder why? "Moon" comes from a word meaning "to measure." You'll find the rest of the word-story of the moon in any dictionary that is big enough to tell about the origin of words.

By the way—speaking of the timekeepers in the sky—don't forget to look up the lives of the great astronomers mentioned in this chapter. You will find, among other things, how Galileo, when only eighteen years of age, helped to give us our clocks and watches by counting his pulse-beats while watching a hanging lamp swing back and forth in the Cathedral of Pisa; how he found out who "The Man in the Moon" really is and what the "Milky Way" is made of; how he invented the wonderful glass for playing hide and seek among the worlds, and with it found four moons in one night!

Yes, and how do you suppose he found that the sun is going round and round like a top, just as the earth does? It was the simplest thing! You'll see!

Old Father Science may be said to be a Santa Claus who keeps a curiosity-shop. His pack is not only full of curious things but he is always "springing surprises on us," as our High School Boy puts it. For example, one of the most curious as well as picturesque evidences that great stretches of land sink under the sea from time to time is furnished by the English swallows. Like many other wealthy people, they spend their winters in Algiers, and they find their way over the Mediterranean, not by any lands they can see between coast and coast—for there are none—but by lands that used to be there, thousands upon thousands of years ago.

But how do the swallows know? They don't. Is it instinct? No. (Whatever instinct is!) Then why do they do it? Look it up and you'll see.[6] Yes, and you'll see that we have habits that we get in the same way; our habits of bowing, for example, because it's the custom, although few people know how it originated.

[6] "Colin Clout's Calendar," by Grant Allen.

CHAPTER II

(FEBRUARY)

Up rose the wild old Winter King

And shook his beard of snow;

"I hear the first young harebell ring,

'Tis time for me to go!

Northward o'er the icy rocks,

Northward o'er the Sea."

—Leland.

THE WINTER THAT LASTED ALL SUMMER

It's been just one thing after another with the world and me ever since we were born. First it was the fire, then it was the flood, and then it was the winter that lasted all summer.

Just what started it nobody knows to this day. Some of the theories have been that this particular winter stayed so long because the earth wavered on its axis, or that it flew the track for a while and got too far away from the sun. From our present knowledge of the machinery of the heavens it is certain that the earth's motions could not vary to this extent. One theory that appeals to many scientists to-day is that when so much of the carbon in the air went into the making of our coal beds the earth became unusually cold, and so snows of each successive winter kept piling up instead of melting away during the spring and summer. When there is plenty of this gas in the air the earth's heat does not escape so fast. But with the great amount of carbon taken up in the growth of the vast forests that were made into coal, Mother Earth's air blanket grew thinner, so to speak, hence the long, cold spell.

From Norton's "Elements of Geology." By permission of Ginn and Company

WHEN THE ICE SHEETS COVERED THE LAND

But whatever caused it one thing is certain; it was a winter that beat anything the oldest inhabitant ever saw; for the cave men are known to have been on earth during this great winter, which is known as the Ice Age or the Glacial Period. A great big ice cap reached from the North Pole far down into the Temperate Zone in North America, Europe, and Asia.

FROM THE CAVEMAN'S DIARY

This is a little note on the Ice Age from the caveman's diary—the picture of a mammoth scratched with a flint on a mammoth's tusk. You can see how the artist kept trying for the true form with different lines, as all real artists do. Artists don't just have a kind of sign that stands for the thing—like a little boy's picture of a man that he always makes in just one way. Notice the action, the natural motion of the animal. The artist means to say: "This is the way he came at me."

I. The Mild Spell and the Menageries

Just before this dreadful winter set in we had a long, open spell; about a million years or so. It was just like summer most of the year in the temperate zone, and much warmer than it is to-day in what is now the land of the little frosty Eskimo.

There weren't any little Eskimos in those days. In fact, there wasn't much of anything that was little. Everything was on a big scale. Think of a mud-turtle twelve feet long! He was all of that. His skull alone was a yard long and he must have weighed a couple of tons. He had for neighbors in the bordering swamps a number of huge creatures that one wouldn't care to meet.

THE KING OF THE DINOSAURS AT LUNCHEON

Contrast the little, almost dainty, fore limbs with the enormous legs. You can't help thinking of the arms of a human being, can you? In fact, this mixed-up creature looks as if nature were even then dreaming of man, the quadruped who, as some Frenchman said, "took to walking on his hind legs that he might conquer the world."

DREADFULNESS OF MR. DINOSAUR

The Dinosaur, for instance. His name means "terrible reptile." Some members of the family were, indeed, terrible creatures. Just see this one at lunch, Mr. Ceratosaurus. He has the head of a queer horse—"probably a night mare," says the High School Boy—teeth and tail and belly scales like a crocodile, a comb that suggests a rooster's, legs like an ostrich, the talons of an eagle, and the dainty little arms of a child. What a combination! Those small fore limbs were used only for grasping. On his hind legs he stalked about, seeking whom he might eat for dinner. He was about fifty feet long when he was all there. At this late day scientists usually find only parts of him scattered around.

These Dinosaurs came in sizes and differed considerably as to looks and eating and getting about. Some were as small as cats, some walked on four legs, some—like the gentleman at lunch—walked on two. Some were strict vegetarians, while others would have nothing but meat. The Big Boys of the whole tribe were called the Sauropoda or reptile-footed Dinosaurs. One of these, whose bones were found in Colorado, was sixty-five feet long when complete, and he must have weighed around twenty tons. His family nickname was Diplodocus or "Double Beam," because of his long, beam-like neck and his long, beam-like tail.

GENTLE MR. DIPLODOCUS AND HIS WAYS

Considering the reputation some of the other Dinosaurs had as bad citizens, it is only fair to the Diplodocus to say that he was really a gentle creature, and never disturbed anybody—unless somebody disturbed him first. Then he would give them a switch with that tail of his, and it was a switching they were not likely to forget. But his great delight—indeed, his main occupation in life—was to sit deep in the water, prop himself up with his great long tail, like a kangaroo, with just his head out, like a turtle in a pond. Then he would strain little water bugs and similar things through his teeth. He got his meals in this way, very much as the whales do now.

And elephants! You ought to have seen some of the members of the elephant family that arrived after the reptile age, the mammoths, for instance. These huge creatures and many other strange animals were all over the place. It was just like a circus day everywhere all the time. Such elephants don't travel with circuses now, of course, because they were all killed during that dreadful winter, but you can see them in museums, all dressed in their skeletons and neatly held together with wires.

From the mural painting by Charles R. Knight in the American Museum of Natural History

WHEN ELEPHANTS WORE UNDERCLOTHES

This painting on the walls of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City shows herds of reindeer and mammoths in the Ice Age. They didn't mind the cold as elephants do to-day, because of their woolly underclothes. They fed on the shoots and cones of those firs and pines. The reindeer, then as now, ate the lichens we call "reindeer moss," first scraping away the snow with their feet.

HOW THE MAMMOTHS PASSED AWAY

Picture herds of these mammoths huddled together like sheep in dark ravines, and the blinding snow, swept down by the winds, burying them deeper and deeper. That was how they died. You'll notice that they wore their hair long, while the elephants we see in the circuses or at the zoo have hardly any hair at all. This long hair was part of their winter clothing. Under it they wore a close fleece. But this winter was so severe and it lasted so long that even their heavy woollen underwear couldn't save them. Sometimes there would be a thaw, but this was only on the surface and helped turn the snow into ice. And winter piled on winter and on the bodies of the mammoths until they were buried under tons and tons of snow and ice.

HOW THE SNOW CHANGED ITSELF INTO ICE

You know snow will get solid, like ice, where it is under pressure, and it will make hard cakes and ice balls under your shoes. Well, this snow of the long winter just "packed its own self" (as a small boy might say) into ice. It did this by piling on and piling on. The weight of the snow above and behind, in the spaces between the mountains and in the mountain valleys, pressed with enormous force on the snow below and in front.

Then what do you think this ice did? It began to move. And of all the things it did from then on!

II. Marvellous Changes in the Old Home Place

Did you notice those scratches on my face? The ice did that. But, of course, that's nothing in itself. And, besides, I'm not one to complain, as you know. I only speak of it to show what big things may be back of little ones, how much you can learn from the study of so common a thing as a little pebble. For the very same ice fields that scratched the faces of little pebbles like me deepened the gorges and canyons among the mountains and shaved the crowns of the old ones—Bald Mountain, in the Adirondacks, for example. They carried off good farming soil by the thousands of acres from one place and piled it in another; they shoved the Mississippi River back and forth; in fact, turned many streams out of their courses—some of them the other end to, so that they now flow south where they used to flow north. They took old river systems apart, and with the pieces made new ones—the big Missouri for one. They set Niagara Falls up in business; got all the waterfalls ready that are now turning the wheels of New England factories, and even put in great water storage systems that remind one of the Salt River irrigation works, with their big Roosevelt dam in Arizona, or of the reservoirs which England built in the Nile. Lakes in river systems act as reservoirs, you know, and make them flow more evenly, thus keeping the power of falls more uniform, as in the case of Niagara, and making a uniform depth of water for vessels, as in the case of the St. Lawrence River. The Great Lakes do both of these useful things.

From Norton's "Elements of Geology." By permission of Ginn and Company

THE LITTLE MOUNTAIN IN THE BIG CITY

In one of the parks in New York City you can see this illustration of how the glaciers rounded off the mountain-tops.

THE BEEHIVE MOUNTAIN

This huge mass in the Canadian Rockies is known as the Beehive Mountain. Originally a cliff, it was reshaped by the glaciers. Can't you tell from the picture which was the face of the cliff, and from the information in the text which side the glacier climbed up and on which side it tobogganed down?

There were three great centres—union stations, we might call them—from which the ice trains moved out. These were the points at which the ice gathered to the greatest depth, the tops of the great snow banks. One, as you see by our Ice Age map, was away over on the Pacific Coast of Canada. It is called the Cordilleran Centre, from the vast mountain system of which it is a part. Over what is now the province of Keewatin, Canada, was the Keewatin Centre, while the Labrador Centre stood guard over the highlands of Labrador. The ice from the Keewatin and Labrador fields, you notice, flowed farthest to the south. The Keewatin ice giant travelled away down the Mississippi Valley as far as the mouth of what is now the Missouri, while the giant from Labrador got nearly to the mouth of the Ohio.

THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAIN AT THEIR WORK

Don't you always think of a glacier as a big white thing? So it is when it starts to work, but after it has ploughed down the mountain valleys and gathered up a lot of soil—such as the heaps you see in the foreground of the picture—it begins to look as black as a coal-heaver! It gets cracked up into all sorts of odd shapes, too. Doesn't that figure near the centre look like some queer kind of old elephant, with a fierce white eye (it's a big stone) and a snarl on his face?

The reason Old Mr. Labrador didn't reach the mouth of the Ohio—as you can easily guess—was that he didn't go far enough, but could you answer a conundrum like this:

"Why was Mr. Keewatin bound to reach the mouth of the Missouri and stay there for awhile no matter how far he went?"

The answer is easy, when you know it. Because he made the Missouri himself. What we now know as the Missouri River was made of other rivers that the big ice sheet turned around as it advanced and of the water from the ice as the glacier melted its way back home. It was something like Mary and the little lamb, all the time, so long as Mr. Keewatin travelled south; for everywhere he went the Missouri was sure to go, because he kept pushing it ahead of him.

HOW THE OLD MEN PUSHED THE MISSISSIPPI ABOUT

As the ice sheets pushed into its valleys, now from the northeast and now from the northwest, the Mississippi River was pushed back and forth as if it were a—well, as if it weren't anything! It is known that the Mississippi was pushed out of bed by this burly guest from the north because its former channels have been traced along the old ice fronts.

In one part of its course the Mississippi actually got misplaced, and hasn't found its way back to its old bed to this day. This you can see at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. At that point the Minnesota River flows in the Mississippi's old valley—which is plainly too big for it—while above Fort Snelling the Mississippi is forced to squeeze its way through a stingy little gorge that used to belong to the Minnesota, and I'm sure would be plenty big enough for it now. It's like the story of a changeling baby in a fairy tale, isn't it? Only in the fairy tale the changeling always gets back to his old home, while the misplaced Mississippi in Minnesota doesn't.

But the glaciers made it up to the Mississippi, in a way, for this rude jostling. They not only left it an enormous extra supply of water as they melted back home—what would a river be without water?—but they actually took some smaller rivers away from the St. Lawrence and made them do their pouring into the Mississippi system. Although they didn't owe the Ohio any apology for anything, so far as I know, they did the same thing for it, just to be good fellows, I suppose. All the rivers that now empty into the Ohio above Cincinnati used to flow into Lake Erie, but the glaciers turned them south and they've gone on obediently flowing that way ever since.

A PLOWMAN WHO PLOWED THE FARMS AWAY

That these giants of the north, although they must have looked as cold as ice, really had good hearts is shown by the way Old Mr. Labrador treated New England when he went Down East. New England was at that time covered with good, deep, rich soil, the decay of the granite rocks that had been basking in the sun for ages and growing early grass and vegetables for the live stock of those days. Then along came Old Mr. Labrador with his plow, and set to work. But he plowed so deep that he plowed all the farms away! Of the gigantic furrows that he turned a lot of the slices fell over into New York State; but some, I'm sorry to say, dropped off into the sea. This left New England in a bad way, so far as prizes for farm produce at the country fairs a few thousand years later were concerned.

But then what do you suppose Mr. Labrador did, the good old soul? He took a lot of streams that had been flowing north, blocked them up with pebbles and dirt, making them turn right around and flow south, so that in climbing down from the rocks in these new unworn beds they made waterfalls. And it was from the power made by its waterfalls, you know, as your geography tells you, that New England grew to be a great "manu-factur-ing" section.

Courtesy of "The Scientific American."

HOW THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAIN COME TO SCHOOL

You can have glaciers like this right in the schoolroom, and icebergs, too, by means of which the Old Men of the Mountain went to sea. Both the iceberg and its parent, the glacier, are made by the crumpling of white paper around books or any other support. Cliffs of dark-brown grocery-paper bound the deep gully through which the glacier has crept down to the sea. The sea-waves are made with crumpled paper of appropriate colors. (Think what lovely green waves you could make with a piece of old window-shade!) Pieces of white string make good breakers, and powdered chalk can easily be made to turn to snow.

Of course I'm only joking when I speak of these glaciers as if they had minds like the rest of us, but really it almost seems true, when you come to think of all the things they did. Take these New England waterfalls, for instance. The glacier not only made them by turning the rivers around, but, as the ice melted away toward the north the land rose again, being relieved of the enormous weight. And in rising the sloping land not only gave more force to the new southward flowing streams but made it more sure that they should go on flowing south. As if the glaciers said:

THE GRAY TEMPLE OF THE WINDS

This gray mass of sandstone on the Wisconsin prairies is a piece of architecture with which man has had nothing whatever to do. It is all the work of the winds and the rains; of the sea and of rivers; of water and rivers of ice; and the vertical division of the rock into joints by the shrinking of the earth. The detail, the rounding of the pillars, and so on, is largely the work of the winds and their helpers, the frosts, the rains, and the wind-blown sand.

The original mass was carved out of a big rock-bed by flowing rivers that had their course around it on either side. Then one of these rivers was dammed by ice in the days of the glaciers and a lake was formed in which this rock mass stood as an island. The level prairie you now see around it was made by the sand and gravel deposited in the bottom of this lake. The vertical divisions are cracks in the earth crust called "joints." The horizontal divisions are due in part to this cracking process and in part to "stratification," the layer-like arrangement of the rocks when laid in the bottom of the sea, as explained in [Chagter X]. The "cornice" is a layer of harder rock which has yielded less to nature's tools.

"I've turned you around and I want you to stay turned around. And I want you to go on running south and dropping over the falls until the people of New England come down to Lowell and Manchester and those places and get ready to put you to work."

Anyhow, that's just what happened. You can look at it any way you want to.

It was in much the same way that Mr. Labrador and his friend Keewatin did that great piece of engineering at the Great Lakes. Where the Great Lakes are now there used to be rivers that were a part of the St. Lawrence system. Then along came the ice sheets, dammed up these rivers, just as small boys dam up roadside rivulets after a rain, and so made big lakes, as the boys make little lakes in these streamlets. But this wasn't all. The glaciers evidently wanted these to be nice big lakes that would stay there for people to ride on in the beautiful summer weather, and to help haul coal and iron ore and other kinds of freight—Michigan peaches and everything. For look what else they did. With pebbles and big stones and dirt they built the lake walls higher, and dug deep basins for them out of the solid rock. Then they poured in a lot of extra water—beautiful blue water, tons and tons of it—and went back home.

The digging into the rock was done with big chisels—what a carpenter would call "round-nosed" chisels. These chisels, of course, were made of ice. They were what are called the "tongues" or "lobes" of glaciers. As a glacier flows along—always on some down grade—there are portions of it—those long lobes or tongues—that move on ahead of the main mass. This is because those parts of the ice sheet strike a steeper bit of land than the rest of it, so how could they help moving faster?

THE THOUSAND-YEAR CLOCK AT NIAGARA

You've heard of eight-day clocks and clocks that have to be wound only once a year, but here is a clock that was wound up several thousand years ago and is still going beautifully! In placing the wondrous waterfall in Niagara River the glaciers also started a kind of water-clock by which to record—for those who would take the trouble to study it out—how long ago it was the glaciers visited us. Owing to the constant wearing away of the base of the falls, by the water grinding the pebbles against it, great blocks like the one here shown (known as "The Rock of Ages") come tumbling down. So the falls are constantly retreating up-stream, and the distance from where they once stood to where they are now gives a rough idea of the time that has passed since the Old Men of the Mountain set them up in business—about 25,000 years.

The fronts of these lobes are rounded like the waves flowing up a beach, or syrup travelling over pancakes on a cold winter morning. The reason of this roundness is that the centres of these lobes of ice or water travel fastest because the mass on either side furnishes a kind of ball-bearing for the central part.

But this wasn't all. At the very same time, by the very same act, Labrador, Keewatin & Co. set Niagara Falls up in business. In those days there was a Niagara river but no Niagara Falls; at least not the one we know to-day. The ice filled the Ontario Valley so that the streams flowing into it had to turn around and flow south. The Niagara River was one of these streams. Then, as the ice melted, it poured loads of extra water into Lake Erie, so that it was some 30 feet higher than it is at present and began draining out through the new Niagara River, over the rocks that make the falls.

A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF NIAGARA

This is a bird's-eye view of the Niagara region. Where the river crosses a bed of limestone below Buffalo, and again where it crosses another just above the crest of the falls, some of the rock has been dissolved away, thus making it rougher, so that slight rapids have formed. Then comes the mighty plunge, after which the water flows through a gorge for about seven miles. Where the gorge bends abruptly at right angles is the great eddy called "The Whirlpool."

NATURE IS THE ART OF GOD

"Nature," as Sir Thomas Browne so finely said, "is the art of God." And nowhere is this art more striking in its beauty than in the work done by the glaciers. Those wonderful falls and the blue inland seas we call the Great Lakes, and thousands of smaller lakes scattered all over where the glaciers came, are only a part of this art work. The main ice sheets, you notice, didn't reach down among the mountains of California, but these mountains had small glaciers of their own in those days, just as they have now. Only they were much larger then because, as we have seen, it was such a snowy time all over the northern world. Listen to what these home-made glaciers of California did, and listen to how John Muir tells it:

AND TO THINK WE DID IT ALL!

"It is hard," he says, "without long and loving study, to realize how great was the work done. Before the glaciers came, the range"—he is speaking of the Sierras—"was comparatively simple; one vast wave of stone in which a thousand mountains, domes, canyons, ridges, and so forth lay concealed." To carve them out of the stone "nature chose for a tool, not the earthquake or the lightning, but the tender snow flowers, noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries. The snowflakes said, 'Come, we are feeble; let us help one another. Marching in close, deep ranks let us roll away the stones from these mountain sepulchres, and set the landscape free.'"

It is evident that this was all in the Great Plan of things. For the rocks had to be of a certain kind and laid in a certain way for the little members of this art society of the sky to work these landscapes out. And the rocks were so made and laid when they were at least a mile below the surface on which the glaciers set to work.

"It was while these features were taking form in the depths of the range, the particles of the rocks marching to their appointed places in the dark, that the particles of icy vapor in the sky, marching to the same music, assembled to bring them to the light. Then, after their grand task was done, these bands of snow flowers, the mighty glaciers, were melted and removed, as if of no more importance than dew destined to last but an hour."[7]

[7] "The Mountains of California." John Muir.

HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY

How do you suppose warm water—of all things!—could have caused the Ice Age? This theory is one that was offered by a very eminent geologist, Doctor Shaler, of Harvard.[8]

[8] "Nature and Man in America."

In the same book he also explains how the old men of the mountain may have helped to make New York City, although they were never there in their lives, of course.

When you take up geology as a special study—I hope you will—you will find that there were five particularly heavy snowfalls during the long winter. But why not look it up now? If you can't do it just get somebody else in the family to do it for you. Where is father's college geology? In the last two of these storms Mr. Labrador rode all over New England and clear to the sea, where he amused himself for a long time by setting icebergs drifting out over the Atlantic.

How do they know about the icebergs? That's one of the interesting things the books tell.

These books also show how Niagara Falls acts as a great time-clock that tells how long ago it was since the glaciers visited us. According to the record on the "dial" it was somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 years ago. (Of course this isn't what we would call very close timekeeping; but remember, in the long story of the earth even a hundred thousand years is a mere tick of the clock.)

And the way this clock is running down shows we're going to lose Niagara Falls in the course of time. All falls finally run down in the same way. This is the rather flippant way my high school friend put it:

"First, the water falls over the waterfall; then the waterfall falls, piece by piece, and the water falls no more. It's a sad case."

(You'll see what he meant, quickly enough, when you read up on waterfalls. Your geography tells, doesn't it? Well, then, of course you know.)

But here's a question you can answer right out of this chapter. Which one of the illustrations shows that the mammoths and the cave men lived on earth at the same time?

That the mammoth was seen in the flesh by those remarkable artists of the caves is plain, but what do you say to seeing a mammoth in the flesh in these days? Remember the mammoths have all been dead for thousands of years. (Elephant, Mammoth, Siberia.)

What is there about the climate of Siberia that made this strange thing possible?

How did the mammoth get his name? Was it because he was so big—such a "mammoth" creature?[9]

[9] Mammoth, you will find, comes from a word meaning "earth." It didn't mean "big" at all at first. One of the most lovable traits of a good dictionary, I think, is that it tells so many interesting little stories like that about the early life of words; of their days of adventure, so to speak, when there was no telling how they would come out.

How did the mammoths compare in size with the elephants of to-day?

Which was the bigger, the mastodon or the mammoth?

Did we ever have mastodons in North America? And were there mammoths, too?

If you want to see more about what the travelling menageries of the days before the Ice Age looked like hunt up these words: Archelon, dinosaur, ceratosaurus, diplodocus, stegosaurus, triceratops.

See what the geography says about the manufacturing towns of New England and how many of them have water power.

In that remarkable little book by Grant Allen[10] already referred to in the H. & S. at the end of [Chapter I], on [page 139], you will find what the Ice Age had to do with the fact that the rabbits of Canada and our northern border States wear white clothes in winter, while Br'er Rabbit of our Middle and Southern States keeps his yellow-brown suit on all the year.

[10] "Colin Clout's Calendar."

And on [page 204] how a little plant, whose old home was in the Arctics, got stranded on an English hilltop among the mossy clefts of weathered granite, and how the beautiful lady who has a little flower named after her slipper (we all know that slipper) is leaving England because the climate is too mild!

THE SUMMER PASTURES ON THE JUNGFRAU

Here are some of those Swiss cattle in their summer pastures. Doesn't look much like summer, does it? But there's one thing besides the cattle that tells. See that stretch of snow all by itself? That's a snow-bank which has escaped the summer sun because it is protected by the ravine in which it lies. All around it the ground is bare of snow.

CHAPTER III

(MARCH)

With rushing winds and gloomy skies

The dark and stubborn Winter dies;

Far off, unseen, Spring faintly cries,

Bidding her earliest child arise.

—Bayard Taylor.

THE SOUL OF THE SPRING AND THE LANDS OF ETERNAL SNOW

And that's how the Old Men of the Mountain visited us in the Ice Age and what they did and how they did it. But now that they have all been back home so long don't you think it would be nice and polite to return the call—especially when you remember all they did for us, making beautiful lakes and rivers and waterfalls and mountain scenery?

I. Springtime in the Alps

The best time to do this would be in the spring, because then the kingdom of the glaciers is most beautiful, and the spirit of a glorious new world, just waking up, is abroad everywhere. The glaciers themselves seem to feel so good about it that they start to sing. And like the birds, their joyous springtime mood responds to the quick changes of sun and shade. In our own land when the sky grows cloudy, even for a short time as you may have noticed, birds stop singing. Then when the sky clears they start up again. But, up here in the Alps in the spring when the birds are singing among the mountain meadows, the glaciers, at whose feet these meadows lie, do the very same thing. The songs of the birds are various, and the song of the same bird will differ at different times of day, but the song of the glacier is always the same—a pleasant dreamy tune between the murmur of little voices and the tinkle of distant bells.

The very rocks that the glacier carries on its back seem to catch the spirit of the springtime; for, when the weather is bright, they go strolling. And when they do they remind us a little of that painting by Franz Hals, "The Laughing Cavalier," for they apparently wear a big broad-brimmed hat cocked jauntily on one side.

UP WHERE THE GLACIERS GROW

Here we are, looking down on the roof of the Alps—from a flying-machine, let us say. The sky-line used to be more like the ridge of a house, straight across. In the course of the ages the glaciers and the weather have cut down the softer rock, leaving those peaks. At the top are the snow-fields. Farther down the glaciers begin to form. Still farther down, where the glaciers have begun to melt, you can see a stream—its waters have taken white in the picture because of the foam and the ground-up rock in it called "rock flour"—falling into the woods below, the "timber line" of your geography. Ruskin has a wonderful word-picture of these mountain streams in his "Modern Painters." The index of any edition will tell you where.

THE MAN WHO DISCOVERED THE ICE AGE