the great glacier began its retreat, and over the 

 spot there broods a silence, as over historic ground 

 once the theater of great actions. After untold 

 centuries, the wild rose and the hay-scented fern 

 cluster round the boulder, and dandelions star the 

 grass. 



I please myself with imagining the venerable 

 pasture stones to have been observant of events and 

 to have retained the memory of it all, as the 

 Colosseum might have memories of Rome, or the 

 Sphinx of Egypt and the desert. Such have seen 

 races live out their lives and disappear. That every 

 dog has his day might well be a maxim among 

 these ancient ones of the earth who saw a tropic 

 jungle resolve itself into an Arctic solitude and as 

 slowly give way to a temperate zone. I salute the 

 pasture stone as having witnessed the advent of 

 man upon the earth. It is difficult to associate the 

 tertiary animals with anything but the museum, 

 or to realize that those preposterous Paleozoic 

 reptiles were ever other than fossils. But here is a 

 weather-beaten observer that was actually contem- 

 porary with that life, to us so intangible and 

 shadowy; that knew the ancestor of the horse, 

 and ages before the separation from the mother 



