256 SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



Although our positive knowledge of the vegetation of 

 the period immediately preceding the advent of the reign 

 of ice is confessedly meagre, it is certain that all the facts 

 in our possession point to close specific correspondence 

 with the modern vegetation of the same regions, modified, 

 certainly, by the fact that even in the latest Tertiary the 

 climate was considerably warmer than in the same lati- 

 tudes at the present day. 



All the luxuriant vegetation which flourished at the 

 close of the Tertiary was undoubtedly swept off by the 

 events which characterized the reign of ice, and, as has 

 been already stated, the ruins of this vegetation were en- 

 tombed in the rocky debris created by the moving glacier. 

 The drift deposits became the vast granary in which Na- 

 ture preserved her store of seeds through the long rigors 

 of a geological winter. 



But what evidences have we that the seeds of plants are 

 capable of retaining their vitality through a geological pe- 

 riod ? 



The ordinary process of destruction of vegetable tissues 

 is merely an oxydation of the carbon and hydrogen enter- 

 ing into their constitution. I seriously doubt whether the 

 requisite conditions for such oxydation exist at considera- 

 ble depths in the soil. Mr. Jabez Hayden, of Windsor 

 Locks, Connecticut, has a small quantity of corn, which is 

 part of a bushel or more uncovered by the breaking away 

 of the banks of the Connecticut River, a little above the 

 mouth of the Farmington, not many years since. It prob- 

 ably dates back prior to the settlement of Windsor in 1635. 

 The kernels had been charred and buried below the ordi- 

 nary depths of cultivation (Stiles' s Hist. Ancient Windsor, 

 p. 85). 



It is stated that the piles sustaining the " London Bridge" 

 have been driven five hundred years, and are still compar 



