THROUGH THE GEOLOGIST’S EYES 
know that it was not made at all, in the mechanical 
sense, but that it grew — that itis an evolution 
as much as the life upon the surface, that it has 
an almost infinite past, that it has been developing 
and ripening for millions upon millions of years, a 
veritable apple upon the great sidereal tree, amelio- 
rating from cycle to cycle, mellowing, coloring, 
sweetening — why, such a revelation adds im- 
mensely to our interest in it. 
As with nearly everything else, the wonder of the 
world grows the more we grasp its history. The 
wonder of life grows the more we consider the chaos 
of fire and death out of which it came; the wonder of 
man grows the more we peer into the abyss of geo- 
logic time and of low bestial life out of which he 
came. 
Not a tree, not a shrub, not a flower, not a green 
thing growing, not an insect of an hour, but has a 
background of a vast zon of geologic and astro- 
nomic time, out of which the forces that shaped it 
have emerged, and over which the powers of chaos 
and darkness have failed to prevail. 
The modern geologist affords us one of the best 
illustrations of the uses of the scientific imagina- 
tion that we can turn to. The scientific imagination 
seems to be about the latest phase of the evolution 
of the human mind. This power of interpretation 
of concrete facts, this Miltonic flight into time and 
space, into the heavens above, and into the bowels 
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