94 IN THE ACADIAN LAND. 



this, but we know it as a hunter knows where 

 his game has been, by his tracks. 



Our world had a beginning; it will have 

 an ending. The nightly skies show pavilions of 

 suns clustering in millions beyond the reach of 

 all instruments. Among an endless procession 

 of worlds ours is included. Whether this ledge 

 of rock was begun twenty million or forty 

 million years ago is all the same, when we con- 

 sider that time had no beginning and can have 

 no ending. We measure it by our sunshine, but 

 if all suns were instantly quenched, time would 

 survive. We do not alter the passage of time 

 by stopping all the clocks, so if all suns disap- 

 peared events could transpire, although the 

 scale of measuring their duration was lost. 

 Eternity reaches backward as well as forward. 

 We are never in it, because the present is neither 

 in it nor out of it, and we only live instant by 

 instant. So we need not scant ourselves with 

 time in considering the geological history of the 

 globe. We are obliged to reckon in millions of 

 years when dealing with this subject. 



If we go into the eastern part of our province, 

 the coal mines will be there to interest you. If 

 you do not already know, then you may readily 

 know that the coal beds of the world are formed 

 of leaves, branches and trunks of trees, and 



