A GEOLOGICAL LESSOAT. 671 
by Five, was, "water washed the valleys out." Their attention having pre- 
viously been called to the miniature mountains and volcanoes formed in the 
process of cooking mush, the second answer, from Seven, was that " volcanoes 
had thrown up the hills leaving valleys between." Here were two possible solu- 
tions to the problem, which are now to be tested. [Nine, in these inquiries, 
was expected to withhold his opinion and act only as a reserve to be called on 
when more wisdom was needed.] An objection raised against Seven's theory 
was, " if of volcanic origin, the hills ought to show rocks upon their sides or 
top." But these were nowhere to be seen. Seven urged the objection against 
Five's theory, that the valleys were covered with grass and water, and gullies were 
not. On descending the slope of this first hill. Seven saw a gully, which he ac- 
knowledged had been washed out by water, in parts of which grass was growing. 
On reaching the valley below, he found a larger gully in which more grass was 
growing, and a httle further on could see a broad ravine, or valley, in which a 
small stream was still running, and this all had previously seen swollen to a river 
of considerable size. By this time Seven was ready to admit that Five had given 
the correct solution. 
In the first valley they entered, the second problem which presented itself 
was this : " How high was the ground, where the valleys now are, before any 
was washed away?" After some wild guessing by Five and Seven, Nine, after 
noticing that the several hills about them were nearly of the same height, an- 
swered that it must have been as high as the hills are now. By looking to the 
head of this same valley, they could see that the high ground is still being washed 
away, and the valley even now extending, with each washing rain, farther and 
farther in that direction. 
A few steps beyond, they come to a ravine on whose edge, twenty-six inches 
below the surface, which was covered with a thick turf, a long streak of brick red 
earth appears with occasionally a few bricks, and, in one place, a pile of unplast- 
ered bricks. This suggested for problem three the question how the red earth 
and these bricks came there, lying as all did upon a rich, black soil. Nine 
answered promptly, "There must have been once a brick-kiln here." From 
the resemblance to the surface of other brick-kilns they had before visited, all 
were satisfied with this solution, though a kiln in this place was never seen or 
heard of by any one of the party. Problem four was at hand in the question 
how the brick-yard became covered over two feet deep with earth. The answ^er 
was equally at hand in the obvious fact that this was at the foot of a long valley 
from whose head the earth was still being washed down by every rain and de- 
posited as the water spread out over the flat surface below. Next came problem 
five in the query whether the washing in of the earth to cover the brick-yard was 
before or after the washing out of the gully which now reveals its former exist- 
ence. The answer to this was too plain for dispute, though, strange to say, 
rather slow in coming. Bricks exposed on the edge and tumbled into this gulch 
prove it of later origin. Land-slides and faults on the opposite side of this ravine 
ihad before received attention and were no longer problems but facts, worthy of 
