3 2 



as much awe and mystery as the monuments at Stone 

 Henge. He says 



A large stone is sometimes seen to lie 

 Couched on the bald top of an eminence, 

 Wonder to all who do the same espy 

 By what means it could thither come and whence, 

 So that it seems a thing endued with sense, 

 Like a sea beast crawled forth that on a shelf 

 Of rock and sand reposeth — there to sun itself. 



If Wordsworth's Excursion had been geological he would 

 probably have understood the boulder better, and then, 

 the mystery being gone, we might have had an essay on 

 glacial action instead of a beautiful poem. Fortunately 

 we are able to have both. Ignorance and superstition are 

 no longer considered essential to the highest type of poet 

 ry or religion, nor a knowledge of physics fatal to either. 

 Happier than by-gone centuries the nineteenth appreciates 

 poetry in science as well as science in poetry, and relig- 

 ion in both. The leading features of the glacial theory 

 may be considered .as established, though, a feeble fight 

 is yet kept up against the Glacialists by the Diluvialists, 

 who attribute the drift beds to Noah's flood. Its import- 

 ant bearing on all theories of the earth's formation, geo- 

 logic epochs and time, the beginning and progress of veg- 

 etable and animal life, the introduction of man, will readi- 

 ly occur to all. Theories grow like some scientists say 

 the earth grew At first they are very thin and nebu- 

 lous. Some, by swift revolution and laws dimly under- 

 stood, become more and more solid until they harden into 

 granite. Others never harden. They fade away, be- 

 come comets or remain cloudy mists through which any- 

 body can see who chooses to look with .scientific eyes, 

 Whatever may become of many hypotheses just now in 

 their first whirling stage, the boulders are here by mill- 

 ions, often in great groups, forming "lithological parlia- 

 ments" as an English geologist expresses it, or "stone 

 mass conventions." as we would say. They are hard 

 facts, solid condensed logic, granite syllogisms, which all 

 the ologies must consider. Agassiz's great interest in 

 them had a foundation, the extent of which becomes evi- 



