. Relics of primeval life, beginning of life in the dawn of geological time. s upheaveInto the clouds ; their tops ascend the high as heaved the tumid hills, so lowDown sunk a hollow bottom wide and bed of waters. Englishmen have been accused of taking theirideas of creation from Milton rather than fromnature or the Bible. Milton had not the guidanceof modern geology. His cosmology is entirely thatof a close student of the Biblical narrative ofcreation. He is in many respects the best commen-tator on the early chapters of Genesis, because hehad a very clear conception of
. Relics of primeval life, beginning of life in the dawn of geological time. s upheaveInto the clouds ; their tops ascend the high as heaved the tumid hills, so lowDown sunk a hollow bottom wide and bed of waters. Englishmen have been accused of taking theirideas of creation from Milton rather than fromnature or the Bible. Milton had not the guidanceof modern geology. His cosmology is entirely thatof a close student of the Biblical narrative ofcreation. He is in many respects the best commen-tator on the early chapters of Genesis, because hehad a very clear conception of the mind of thewriter, and the power of expressing the ideas hederived from the old record. For the same reasonhe is the greatest bard of creation and primitiveman, and surprisingly accurate and true to nature. THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE CONTINENTS 85 Then began the great processes of denudationand sedimentation to which we owe the succeedingrock formations. The rains descended on themountain steeps, and washed the decaying rocksas sand, gravel and mud into the rivers and the. Fig. 18.—Map of Laurentian, North the protaxis or nucleus of the continent. sea. The sea itself raged against the coasts, and cut deeply into their softer parts; and all thedetritus thus produced by atmospheric and marine denudation was spread out by the tides and currents in the bed of the ocean, and its gulfs and S6 RELICS OF PRIMEVAL LIFE seas, forming the first aqueous deposits, while theoriginal land must have been correspondingly re-duced. The sea might still be warm, and it held in solu-tion or suspension somewhat different substancesfrom those now present in it, and the land was atfirst a mere chaos of rocky crags and so soon as the temperature of the waters fellsomewhat below the boiling point, and as even alittle soil formed in the valleys and hollows of theland, there was scope for life, provided that itsgerms could be introduced. On a small scale there was something
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