TIME AND CHANGE 



Dearest Nature, strong and kind. 

 Whispered, * Darling, never mind ! 

 To-morrow they will wear another face. 

 The founder thou; these are thy race! ' " 



I fancy Emerson would be surprised and probably 

 displeased at the use I have made of his lines. I re- 

 member once hearing him say that his teacher in 

 such matters as I am here touching upon was Agas- 

 siz, and not Darwin. Yet did he not write that 

 audacious line about "the worm striving to be 

 man"? And Nature certainly took his "little 

 man" by the hand and led him forward, and on the 

 morrow the rest of the animal creation "wore an- 

 other face." 



HI 



In my geological studies I have had a good deal 

 of trouble with the sedimentary rocks, trying to 

 trace their genealogy and getting them properly 

 fathered and mothered. I do not think the geologists 

 fully appreciate what a difficult problem the origin 

 of these rocks presents to the lay mind. They bulk 

 so large, while the mass of original crystalline rocks 

 from which they are supposed to have been derived 

 is so small in comparison. In the case of our own 

 continent we have, to begin with, about two million 

 of square miles of Archaean rocks in detached lines 

 and masses, rising here and there above the prim- 

 ordial ocean; a large triangular mass in Canada, 

 and two broken lines of smaller masses running 



98 



