14 GLAUCUS ; OR, 



moss takes its place ; for lie is now in a new 

 world ; a region whose climate is eternally influ- 

 enced by some fresh law (after which he vainly 

 guesses with a sigh at his own ignorance) which 

 renders life imjiossible to one species, possible 

 to another. And it is a still more solemn 

 thought to hira, that it was not always so ; that 

 ccons and ages back, that rock which he passed 

 a thousand feet below was fringed, not as now 

 with fern, and blue bugle, and white bramble- 

 ilowers, but perhaps with the alp-rose and the 

 " gemsen-kraut " of Mont Blanc, at least with 

 Alpine Saxifrages which have now retreated fif- 

 teen hundred feet up the mountain-side, and with 

 the blue Snow-Gentian, and the Canadian Ledum, 

 which have all but vanished out of the British 

 Isles. And what is it which tells him that 

 strange story ? Yon smoothed and rounded sur- 

 face of rock, polished, remark, across the strata, 

 and against the grain ; and furrowed here and 

 there, as if by iron talons, with long parallel 

 scratches. It was the crawling of a glacier 

 which polished that rock-face ; the stones fallen 

 from Snowdon peak into the half-liquid lake of 

 ice above, which ploughed those furrows. JEons 

 and a;ons ago, before the time when Adam first 



