298 SCIENCE IN EDUCATION 



the sea once covered their site. You have seen the 

 remains of long extinct shells, fishes, and reptiles 

 that have been disinterred from the mud and silt left 

 behind by the vanished waters. You have found evi- 

 dence that not once only, but again and again, after 

 vast lapses of time and many successive revolutions, 

 the land has sunk beneath the ocean and has once 

 more emerged. You have been shown traces of 

 underground commotion, and you can point to places 

 where, over central England, volcanoes were once 

 active. You have learnt that the various elements of 

 the landscape have thus been gradually put together 

 during successive ages, and that the slow processes, 

 whereby the characteristic forms of the ground have 

 been carved out, are still in progress under your eye. 



While, therefore, you are keenly alive to the present 

 beauty of the scene, it speaks to you at every turn 

 of the past. Each feature recalls some incident in the 

 strange primeval history that has been transacted here. 

 The succession of contrasts between what is now and 

 what has been fills you with wonder and delight. 

 You feel as if a new sense had been given to you, 

 and that with its aid your appreciation of scenery has 

 been enlarged and deepened to a marvellous degree. 



And so too is it with your relation to all the other 

 departments of Nature. The movements of the clouds, 

 the fall of rain, the flow of brook and river, the 

 changes of the seasons, the succession of calm and 

 storm, do not pass before your eyes now as they 

 once did. While they minister to the joy of life, 

 they speak to you of that all-embracing system 

 of process and law that governs the world. The 



