UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



makes a sheer leap the whole distance, — twenty, 

 thirty, or fifty feet, as the case may be, — the harder 

 rock at the top always holding out while the softer 

 layers retreat beneath it, forming in this respect min- 

 iature Niagaras. When near one of these falls I 

 seldom miss the opportunity to climb the side of the 

 gorge under the overhanging rock and inspect its 

 under surface, and feel it with my hand. The ele- 

 ments have here separated the leaves of the great 

 stone book and one may read some of the history 

 written there. When I pass my hand over the bot- 

 tom side of the superincumbent rock, I know I am 

 passing it over the contours, the little depressions 

 and unevennesses of surface, of the mud of the old 

 lake or inland sea bottom, upon which the material 

 of the harder rock was laid down more than fifty 

 milhons of years ago. There are here and there little 

 protuberances, the size of peas and beans, which 

 probably mark where Uttle gas bubbles were in the 

 old mud bottom. 



One thing that arrests attention in such a place 

 is the abruptness of the change from one species 

 of rock to another, as marked and sudden as a 

 change in a piece of masonry from brick to stone, or 

 from stone to iron. The two meet but do not min- 

 gle. Nature seems suddenly to have turned over a 

 new leaf, and to have begun a new chapter in her 

 great stone book. What happened.^ There is no 

 evidence in this region of crustal disturbance since 



46 



