THROUGH THE GEOLOGIST’S EYES 
his cup on the seashore. Looked at from our point 
of view, the great geological processes often seem 
engaged in world-destruction rather than in world- 
building. Those oft-repeated invasions of the con- 
tinents by the ocean, which have gone on from 
Archeean times, and during which vast areas which 
had been dry land for ages were engulfed, seem like 
world-wide catastrophes. And no doubt they were 
such to myriads of plants and animals of those 
times. But this is the way the continents grew. All 
the forces of the invading waters were engaged in 
making more land. 
The geologist is bold; he is made so by the facts 
and processes with which he deals; his daring affirm- 
ations are inspired by a study of the features of the 
earth about him; his time is not our time, his hori- 
zons are not our horizons; he escapes from our human 
experiences and standards into the vast out-of-doors 
of the geologic forces and geologic ages. The text 
he deciphers is written large, written across the face 
of the continent, written in mountain-chains and 
ocean depths, and in the piled strata of the globe. 
We untrained observers cannot spell out these 
texts, because they are written large; our vision is 
adjusted to smaller print; we are like the school-boy 
who finds on the map the name of a town or a river, 
but does not see the name of the state or the con- 
tinent printed across it. If the geologist did not 
tell us, how should we ever suspect that probably 
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