Fashioning of the Earth 21 



hydrogen and helium out of the nitrogen atom, we 

 know that inorganic evolution is at our doors. 



It -is at any rate possible to think of a nucleus of 

 hydrogen gathering electrons about it and becoming 

 an atom, of atoms uniting into molecules, and of 

 molecules forming chains. In any case we hear one of 

 the leaders of modern chemistry speaking of "the 

 evolution of matter." 



The cosmographic picture of the making of worlds 

 is still in the mist; the evolution of matter is still a 

 young idea; but both are very convincing. A third 

 chapter, where the tone is more assured, is the fash- 

 ioning of the earth. Difficulties in detail abound, but 

 there is no great difficulty in principle. We may or 

 may not accept such a novelty as Wegener's theory 

 of the drift of continental masses away from the 

 Poles, and from east to west ; we may not believe that 

 America is going west faster than Europe ; but there 

 is no dubiety in any mind as to gradual genesis of 

 the earth by a series of slow changes the outcome of 

 which has been great beauty. How admirable is this 

 sentence from James Hutton's Theory of the Earth 

 (1785) : "No powers are to be employed that are 

 not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted of 

 except those of which we know the principle, and 

 no extraordinary events to be alleged to explain a 

 common appearance." 



In his Landscape in History, Sir Archibald Geikie 

 tells how he "found the splintered slabs of stone [on 

 the wind-swept summit of Slieve League in Donegal] 

 to be full of stems of fossil trees. Here, two thousand 



