60 The Bible of Nature 



break down the most solid seashore rocks, the 

 crayfish and their enemies, the water-voles, unite 

 to make the river-banks collapse, the beavers have 

 changed the aspect of large tracts of country, and 

 so on through a long list. 



On the other hand we see conservative agen- 

 cies the accumulation of enormous quantities 

 of calcareous and siliceous ooze in the great 

 abysses of the oceans, the formation of great shell- 

 beds, the building of coral-reefs. We have al- 

 ready spoken of the work of earthworms, and when 

 we add to that all that is done by hundreds of other 

 subterranean creatures from burial beetles to 

 moles and all that is effected by the microbes of 

 the soil, we see a new meaning in the phrase "the 

 living earth." 



To sum up, 



"They say the solid earth whereon we tread 

 In tracks of fluent heat began, 

 And grew to seeming random forms, 

 The seeming prey of cyclic storms, 

 Till at the last arose the man." 



This in more precise language the astronomers and 

 geologists tell us, that the earth took form from a 

 whirling crowd of meteorites; that after a stage of 

 intense heat it began to cool and consolidate; that 

 it got its centrosphere, its tektosphere, its litho- 

 sphere, its hydrosphere, its atmosphere; that as it 



