THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



and animals followed it back into the abandoned 

 territory; but think what a hit-and-miss method 

 the getting back must have been, especially to the 

 plants and the trees! The animal life would wait 

 upon the vegetable, upon which it depends, and the 

 vegetable would wait upon the winds, or upon what- 

 ever forces of Nature were going their way. Slowly, 

 in the course of many thousand years, they would 

 go back and adapt themselves to the changed condi- 

 tions. The plants and trees whose seeds are sown by 

 the winds would probably take the lead ; the fruit and 

 nut-bearing trees which sustain, and, in turn, depend 

 upon animal Ufe to scatter them, would bring up 

 the rear. The Pleistocene man, a rude savage, no 

 doubt, with rude stone weapons and tools, would fol- 

 low along as his means of subsistence allowed. The 

 whole return of life to the vast glaciated region must 

 have been a very slow, roundabout, hit-and-miss 

 process, stretching over a very long period of 

 time. 



The sun itself is a type of Nature's wholesale, 

 spendthrift method. It radiates its light and heat 

 in every possible direction, and if we regard its func- 

 tion as the source of light and heat to the worlds re- 

 volving round it, what an incalculable waste goes 

 on forever and ever! The amount of this life-giving 

 solar radiance that falls on the planets is a fraction 

 so small that it is like a grain of sand compared to 

 the seashore. Yet probably, in our sense of the word, 

 80 



