FIELD AND STUDY 



the higher Catskills, a chapter of world-history 

 in miniature. It tells of the ancient sea-beaches of 

 early Devonian times, and of the breaking-up of 

 vast sheets of quartz rock of still earlier times. It 

 tells of the laying-down of the sandstone strata in 

 this vastly remote period, and of floods that carried 

 and scattered these big quartz pebbles upon it. It 

 tells of the lifting-up of these strata in the great 

 Catskill plateau, and their subsequent erosion into 

 deep valleys, and their grinding-down by the great 

 ice-sheet. When I hold it in my hand I seem to hear 

 the great clock of geologic time ticking off the vast 

 periods that are but hours in the cycle of geologic 

 change. 



In Georgia I used to see large areas of the red soil 

 under the plough, covered with fragments of quartz, 

 suggesting bones. What a story they told of the 

 decay of the granite rocks out of which so much of 

 the soil of the State is made, setting free the streaks 

 of quartz in them which is so hard that the tooth of 

 time makes little impression upon it. 



The Southern granite decays much more readily 

 than does the New England granite, just why I can- 

 not say. New England granite erodes very slowly, 

 but Georgian granite seems to rot. Where these 

 brilliant red roads cut through the hills, they lay 

 open the earth from the ploughable soil at the sur- 

 face to the decaying, crumbling, highly colored 

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