204 



NATURE FOB ITS OWN SAKE 



work ? The northern Libyan desert may yet 

 form the bed of a great inland sea. 



And is there nothing more permanent about 

 the earth than prairie grass, and forest trees, 

 and shifting desert sands nothing more sub- 

 stantial than these ? If one stands on the 

 height of Murren and looks across to the base 

 of the Jungf rau, he may think differently. What 

 a stupendous pedestal for that white-capped 

 young goddess of the Oberland ! The wall of 

 rock is simply tremendous in volume. It 

 stretches wide, it reaches high. It is the vault- 

 ing of the globe a glimpse of the understruct- 

 ure of the crust exposed to view by the acci- 

 dent of a valley. It is this massive vaulting that 

 apparently holds the globe together as the shell 

 does the egg. It stretches around the whole 

 earth ; and the forests, the sands, the mountains, 

 the seas, are related to it only as the mosses, the 

 wind-blown dust, and the rain-pools to the Col- 

 iseum's walls upon which they lie. The struct- 

 ure is almost stifling to the imagination, so 

 great is the plan, so small is the mind of man 

 to grasp it. If we look away from the wall of 

 rock up into the far valleys, where the blue air 

 lies packed in between the uplifted peaks, and 

 listen a moment, we shall realize a silence so in- 



