TIME AND CHANGE 



learned that the rock had been found in the bed of 

 a small creek near by, and that the farmer had given 

 a hundred dollars to have it moved to its place in 

 front of his house. Had I seen the old farmer I am 

 sure I could have added to his interest and pride 

 in his monument by telling him that it was Adiron 

 dack gneiss, and had been brought from that region 

 on the back, or in the maw, of a glacier, many tens 

 of thousands of years ago. But it is highly probable 

 that, were he an uneducated man, he would have 

 treated my statement with contempt or incredulity. 

 Education does at least this for a man : it opens his 

 mind and makes him less skeptical about things not 

 dreamed of in his philosophy. 



This boulder had been rolled and worn in its long, 

 slow ride till it was nearly round. I have a much 

 smaller boulder, probably from the same quarry, 

 which I planted at the head of my garden for a seat 

 when the hoe gets tired. When it was dropped here 

 on the land that is now my field, the bed and valley 

 of the Hudson were occupied by the old glacier 

 which, during its decline and recession, built up 

 the terraces opposite me (where now stands a 

 multimillionaire s copy of an Italian palace), and 

 which added to and uncovered the river slopes where 

 now my own vineyards are planted. 



The flowing or the creeping of this old ice-sheet, 

 so that it could transport large boulders hundreds 

 of miles, is one of the most remarkable things about 

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