210 NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
and color on the interior of the sea-shell also 
enrves the prairie, arches the hill, rounds the 
lake, and bends the river. The line forever 
sweeps in and around. -Eyen when there are 
The law of “apparent exceptious in nature’s products, as in 
theewrele. | the forms of crystals (and there are round erys- 
tals, too), or the sharp needles of a mountain- 
peak, there is an attempt to amend the fault, 
as it were. The winds, the rains, the frost, 
the heat, immediately set about rounding and 
curving the knife-like edges; and the peak, 
which at a distance looks sharp and angn- 
lar, proves to be round and smooth when 
seen close to view. The hill, that to-day is 
dome-crowned like a Byzantine lantern, was 
once snapped and splintered upward by the 
sharp fold of the rock strata; and many a 
coast-lying island, that now is carpeted with 
soft rolls of green sward, was originally banked 
up in a ragged heap and pushed ahead of a 
glacier in the great Ice Age. 
More The circle is indeed nature’s great working 
pane principle. Organic and inorganic matter— 
winds, storms, clouds, tides—all display it. 
The life that springs up from the earth withers 
and returns to the earth again, rising and fall- 
ing in the lines of a jetting fountain; and the 
