THROUGH THE GEOLOGIST'S EYES 



the geologists give me the impression that this is 

 what we are to beHeve. 



Chamberhn and SaHsbury, in their recent col- 

 lege geology, teach that each new formation implies 

 the destruction of an equivalent amount of older 

 rock — every system being entirely built up out of 

 the older one beneath it. Lyell and Dana teach the 

 same thing. If this were true, could there have been 

 any continental growth at all? Could a city grow 

 by the process of pulling down the old buildings for 

 material to build the new? If the geology is correct, 

 I fail to see how there would be any more land sur- 

 face to-day then there was in Archaean times. Each 

 new formation would only have replaced the old 

 from which it came. The Silurian would only have 

 made good the waste of the Cambrian, and the De- 

 vonian made good the waste of the Silurian, and so 

 on to the top of the series, and in the end we should 

 still have been at the foot of the stairs. That vast 

 interior sea that in Archaean times stretched from 

 the rudimentary Appalachian Mountains to the 

 rudimentary Rocky Mountains, and which is now 

 the heart of the continent, would still have been a 

 part of the primordial ocean. But instead of that, 

 this sea is filled and piled up with sedimentary rocks 

 thousands of feet thick, that have given birth on 

 their surfaces to thousands of square miles of as 

 fertile soil as the earth holds. 



That the original crystalline rocks played the 



101 



