124 NATURE IN A CITY YARD 



I know the locale of certain fragments that 

 I find there speaking now of minerals 

 and rocks, instead of the commoner rags, 

 boots, bottles, and other materials of " made 

 land." The green mica I know comes from 

 Fort George, New York ; the green feldspar 

 from a mile or two south of that point ; the 

 basalt from the palisades of the Hudson ; the 

 jasper from a now extinct reef of it which 

 may be traced beneath that river ; the ser- 

 pentine from Hoboken ; but mixed with 

 these are specimens from the Hudson 

 Highlands, the Adirondacks, the Connecti- 

 cut hills, the Green Mountains, perhaps 

 from those oldest hills of all, the Lauren- 

 tians a noble range, no doubt, that the 

 glacier wore down to mere roots and stumps 

 of its old self. When we record or guess 

 upon these things, man and his work ap- 

 pear too trivial to think about, and time, 

 space, mass, force, too great for his under- 

 standing. There is too, in the passing of 

 the autumn, some hint of the cold death 

 that must overtake the race of humankind, 

 the world it lives in, and the solar system 

 in which it moves. It is too vast and 



