IV 



THROUGH THE EYES OF THE 

 GEOLOGIST 



HOW habitually we go about over the surface 

 of the earth, delving it or cultivating it or 

 leveling it, without thinking that it has not always 

 been as we now find it, that the mountains were not 

 always mountains, nor the valleys always valleys, 

 nor the plains always plains, nor the sand always 

 sand, nor the clay always clay. Our experience goes 

 but a little way in such matters. Such a thought 

 takes us from human time to God s time, from the 

 horizon of place and years to the horizon of geologic 

 ages. We go about our little affairs in the world, 

 sowing and reaping and building and journeying, 

 like children playing through the halls of their an 

 cestors, without pausing to ask how these things all 

 came about. We do not reflect upon the age of our 

 fields any more than we do upon the size of the globe 

 under our feet : when we become curious about such 

 matters and look upon the mountains as either old 

 or young, or as the subjects of birth, growth, and 

 decay, then we are unconscious geologists. It is to 

 our interest in such things that geology appeals and 

 it is this interest that it stimulates and guides. 

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