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place : for he is now in a new world ; a region 

 whose climate is eternally influenced by some fresh 

 law (after which he vainly guesses with a sigh at 

 his own ignorance), which renders life impossible 

 to one species, possible to another. And it is a still 

 more solemn thought to him, that it was not always 

 so ; that seons 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- 

 flowers, but perhaps with the alp-rose and the 

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

 Alpine Saxifrages which have now retreated a 

 thousand 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 smooth and rounded surface 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- 



