228 THE EARTH jMADE READY FOR MAN 



Do you feel sorry that those great, silent forests 

 were caught and overwhelmed by the floods and by 

 the ocean tides? Do you wish that there might be 

 such wonderful forests growing now and that you 

 might see them? 



That could never be, for the trees of those im- 

 mense forests could not live in the air you breathe. 

 They grew until they had used up the carbonic acid 

 gas that so filled the moist, heavy air in those early 

 days. When that was used up and they could grow 

 no longer, they gave place to new kinds of trees 

 more suited to the different air, and more like those 

 we know. 



But the carbon was not really lost, although the 

 great trees had taken it out of the air. None of those 

 elements of which the world is made are ever lost. 

 They are used over and over again, but always kept 

 in some form. Are not the pieces of the old rocks 

 made into new? Are not new rocks made also from 

 the cast off and broken shells of the countless little 

 animals of the sea? The carbon, too, that was once 

 in the air in the form of a heavy gas has been saved 

 from that day to this. 



But how? Those mighty forests were no longer 

 there. They had been buried so deep under sand 

 and clay that no trace of them was left. Yet they 

 were never lost to God's sight or to His purposes. 

 They had only entered the wonderful underground 

 workshop where God's forces are making over into 

 new forms substances that have done their work in 

 another. 



Deep under the ground the same pressure was at 



