Il8 THE LAPSE OF TIME. 



limestone mountain, must have been formed originally 

 under water with almost incredible slowness. It must have 

 been raised up to meet the clouds of heaven since its 

 formation in the ocean-depth. Do you think that this 

 can have been a rapid process ? Volcanic cones, it is 

 true, are sometimes piled up by a sudden effort. But 

 with widespread platforms of solid rock the upheaving 

 forces deal more respectfully. An average elevation of 

 a foot or two in a century, is perhaps a high exceptional 

 speed for such movements. But this rate requires a 

 thousand centuries for a hill only one or two thousand 

 feet high, to rise, not from the depths, but from the 

 surface of the water. If we had only a single formation 

 to deal with instead of scores of them ; if we had a 

 thickness of only one thousand feet of the earth's crust 

 to consider, instead of scores of thousands, the proved 

 antiquity of the globe would be enormous. What is to 

 be said, then, when we stand face to face with what 

 geologists have been pleased to call the new red sand- 

 stone ? This formation cannot be less than millions of 

 years old, although in relation to the Devonian lime- 

 stone it is indisputably new. Those deep red rocks, that 

 with their fantastic profiles in so many places fringe the 

 southern border of Devon, must have been formed since 

 the limestone ; for the simple reason, that in every part 

 they are full of pebbles or fragments of the limestone 

 containing characteristic fossils of the earlier formations. 

 It will at least be granted that you cannot break off a 

 piece from a rock before the rock itself exists. Prior, 

 then, to the very beginning of the formation of these 



