96 IN THE ACADIAN LAND. 



thing, that never shrunk, and shivered and shook, 

 and groaned, and tilted up and down, then these 

 layers of mud and sand would have remained 

 flat on the floor of the ocean, and there would 

 be no ledge for us to observe and discuss. But 

 quite otherwise is the truth. 



A very shaky affair is our old planet. It is 

 cracked and mended in millions of places ; wher- 

 ever a quartz vein exists there was once a rent. 

 The rocky crests of the loftiest mountains are 

 often gleaming with imbedded fossil shells, that 

 were ocean-born. Deep down in the great mines 

 one hears the groaning of the mighty strata of 

 rocks. This is a cooling planet, and as it cools 

 it shrinks, and the hard crust rises in great crum- 

 ples of mountain ranges. On a small scale, a 

 baked apple is wrinkled ; the inside has become 

 smaller, while the skin has not shrunken. Dur- 

 ing this shrinkage our infant ledge was, with all 

 the adjoining rocks, pushed sidewise into waves 

 or crumples, thus forcing what was once a flat 

 surface of rock into various slants or angles, and 

 at the same time pushing them out of water. 

 Through many million years the agencies of air 

 and atmosphere, and heat and cold, and ice, and 

 mighty glaciers and running waters, have worn 

 away the highest parts of the ridges, and left 

 the hardest portions tipped on edge by the 



