AUTUMN 123 



interesting history. Had I stood 18,000 

 years ago where I stand to-day when I 

 weed the hydrangeas and stir the earth 

 about the "pinys," I should have been 

 facing a wall of ice, the receding glacier 

 of the last Ice Age. And I and certain 

 millions of others live on the debris of that 

 glacier. This enormous mass, over a mile 

 thick, moving sluggishly but irresistibly 

 southward to its melting-point, brought 

 with it millions of tons of sand, soil, gravel, 

 and boulders, and dumped them into the 

 Atlantic, building up from the bottom of 

 that sea an island 120 miles long, and leav- 

 ing parts of its moraine at other points 

 between here and the Rockies. A conjunc- 

 tion of exterior planets had pulled at the 

 earth by gravitative force, elongating its 

 orbit, so that for some years the winters 

 on the side slanted from the sun were 

 lengthened and the summers shortened. 

 The southern half of the globe will be 

 frozen up in about 75,000 years, when the 

 conjunction is repeated. 



And in the light of such portentous 

 events the back yard becomes important. 



