UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



rock in those early geologic ages. Dana thinks this 

 conglomerate gives us an idea of the seashore work of 

 that period. Only on a seashore could the crushed ma- 

 terial have been sorted and distributed in this way. 

 According to the published views of a natural 

 philosopher on the Pacific Coast, this rain of rock 

 material from the heavens is no myth. He beUeves 

 that the earth in its early history was surroxmded 

 by a series of nimierous concentric rings of floating 

 cosmic matter, like the rings of Saturn, and that 

 from time to time these rings collapsed and their 

 material fell to earth helping to make up the vast 

 series of stratified rocks. This theory certainly sim- 

 plifies some of the problems of the geologist. My 

 Catskills did not have to go down under the sea to 

 get this coat of mail of quartz pebbles, or these al- 

 ternate layers of red and gray sandstone, and the 

 question of the abrupt ending and beginning of the 

 different series is easily solved; as is also the larger 

 question of where all the diverse material of our 

 enormous system of stratified rock, reckoned by some 

 geologists to be not less than twenty miles thick in 

 North America, came from. In some parts of Scot- 

 land, the old red sandstone, according to Geikie, is 

 twenty thousand feet thick. This explanation of 

 the California theorist gives us all this material, and 

 gives it in the original packages. I wish I could 

 believe it true — and be thankful that there are no 

 more rings to collapse! 



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