246 THE EARTH MADE READY FOR MAN 



Although the ice had plowed through the forests 

 and ground them to powder as it advanced, when 

 it had retreated the land was not so desolate as 

 one would think. It did not leave the rocks wholly 

 bare, but it covered them as it melted with the 

 gravel and sand, as with a mantle. So the little 

 flowers that follow the melting ice and grow up to 

 its very edge had soil to grow upon. So did the trees 

 and the other Alpine plants, as they slowly ad- 

 vanced, following the retreating ice sheet. 



It took very, very long for all this to happen, 

 but by the time the warmer climate had locked the 

 ice sheet up in the polar regions, our country was 

 clothed again with forests and ferns, with shrubs 

 and plants of more varieties than had ever grown 

 before. Animals, birds and insects came again to 

 inhabit the land, and most of these, too, were different 

 from any that had formerly lived here. These ani- 

 mals are those that we know as man's four-footed 

 friends. And with the animals came man. 



To what a world the human race came at last! 

 What a storehouse of riches, what a place of beauty, 

 what a land of resources was this world that God 

 had prepared to be our home. As marvelous as the 

 riches which God has stored away for us, or as the 

 beauty with which He has covered the earth, or as 

 the bounties which He has scattered aboard, are 

 the records which He has left on the rocks of the 

 world so that we may learn in what divine, wonder- 

 ful ways those gifts which we see and use were pre- 

 pared for us. 



