GEOLOGICAL PAPERS. 76 



"Below the wide expanse of forests charred 

 Are beds of rock, in layers soft or hard, 

 Formed on the basement of a sea now gone. 

 Of substance shorn from land no sea was on : 

 For, always, has the sea its basement strown. 

 With shearing of the land, and made it stone. 



"Miles thick the sea built up, lay over lay. 

 With sand, and lime, and iron-rust, and clay : 

 And forms of life from flooded plains and glens, 

 And countless millions of her denizens 

 She felted in the tissue of her spreads 

 To mark the ages of successive beds. 



"So, then, the rocks beneath the plain were built 

 From older rocks dissolved to grit and silt. 

 As life from older life is ever sprung. 

 As ancient forms must pass away for young. 

 Even the Earth itself will pass from view, 

 And, as it has been. Earth be formed anew. 



"The ancient sea- floor most unsteady was — 

 It rose and fell, yet not without a cause : 

 If one shall press upon a plastic ball. 

 Elsewhere 't will bulge, if it shall yield at all : 

 So, when some heaviest portion of Earth's crust 

 Shall sink a little, rise the lightest must. 



"And so, at times, the sea-floor rose to air. 

 For, when the bottom of some sea elsewhere, 

 More burdened with the waste of continent, 

 Sank somewhat lower, this one was upsent. 

 Again, when overfreighted with debris, 

 Down, also, went the bottom of this sea. 



" And some old land that Time had weather'd light 

 Was slowly lifted to a greater height. 

 It ever was, and will be time to come. 

 Things sought, and will geek, equilibrium. 

 And thus, alternate, up and down they swing — 

 The land and sea — like scale-pans balancing. 



"It came to pass the sea itself was drained. 

 And in its place a wide champaign remained. 

 It came to pass the plain became a lake, 

 With many a ferny, many a reedy brake : 

 Titanic monsters wander'd round its brink. 

 And five-toed horses daily came to drink. 



"The ages came and lapsed : It came to pass 

 The lake was banished for a vast morass. 

 Where matted vegetation turned to peat: 

 Trees, sedges, mosses, piled a thousand feet. 

 Were massed, till future tides above should roll, 

 And weight of rock should press them into coal. 



