The Geology of H Ingham. 73 



Let us emphasize to our minds some of the changes in tin* 

 past that we may the mure readily appreciate their surprising 

 character. 



Those who have followed the writer in his attempt to portray 

 past events in the history of this locality have been led 1o contem- 

 plate it, at first, only as an undistinguished part of a molten globe 

 wheeling with immense velocity through space about its parent 

 sun, and gradually through countless ages cooling and tending to- 

 wards consolidation. 



A second view, millions of years later, though immensely remote 

 in the past from our own period, presents a very different scene. 

 The earth has become incrustcd and the land and the waters di- 

 vided ; the atmosphere is hot and murky by exhalations from the 

 surface ; and corrosive rains descend upon the primeval rocks, dis- 

 integrating their substance and washing it into the waters, where 

 it is forming the first sedimentary strata of the planet. 



There is no life discernible, for conditions favorable to life do 

 not exist on the gradually developing world. 



The third striking view in the order of events long after pre- 

 sents the dry land of our territory limited to the area where now 

 arc found the granitic rocks, and this land borders waters of an 

 extensive basin, in which is being slowly deposited the sediment 

 of rivers, and upon this sediment, which is of clayey matter may be 

 seen moving forms of life ; for the Period is the Primordial, and 

 trilobites abound in great numbers along the coast margin in its 

 shallow waters. 



The next view is yet more striking ; for the whole surface of the 

 land bordering the basins along the coast of the territory now of 

 H high am and Nantasket is disturbed by violent igneous action, and 

 volcanoes in active operation are pouring from their craters vast 

 floods of lava over large areas of the surface. 



Many, very many millions of years more elapse before another 

 glimpse is vouchsafed of this locality. Its characteristics arc not 

 distinctly seen, but by a clear view of the landscape of the neigh- 

 borhood and over a vast portion of the land, we recognize that 

 they could not differ from those of the other regions. It is in the 

 great Carboniferous Period, and tropical heat prevails even to the 

 Arctic. The air is heavy with carbon, and gigantic trees and 

 other plants, of a character now known only in the Torrid Zone, 

 grow profusely over the surface. 



The next view presented is the marvellous one that has been 

 dwelt upon, that of ice covering not only this territory but extend- 

 ing from the Arctic Circle, far south and east, into the waters of the 

 Atlantic, there dropping off icebergs as is now the case from the 

 margins of the great ice-sheet of Greenland. 



We take another and a last retrospective view of the locality 

 destined to be our abode. It is in the early part of the present 

 era. Vegetable and animal life have again spread over the ter- 

 ritorv. The Indian roams in the forests hunting deer and other 



