Plant-life, with 74 full-page illus., 24 being from photos, by the author and 50 in colour from drawings . s maybecome fossils. Limestones are even now being formedby chemical agency, and also from the mineral remainsof corals, molluscs, corallines, etc. What is happeningnow has happened throughout the ages. Ever since thefirst land surface was exposed to the elements, the landhas been subjected to denudation. Hard rocks havebeen broken up by frost, eroded by running water, bat-tered by hard fragments borne by wind and has formed dunes from particles of rock, runningwater has carried
Plant-life, with 74 full-page illus., 24 being from photos, by the author and 50 in colour from drawings . s maybecome fossils. Limestones are even now being formedby chemical agency, and also from the mineral remainsof corals, molluscs, corallines, etc. What is happeningnow has happened throughout the ages. Ever since thefirst land surface was exposed to the elements, the landhas been subjected to denudation. Hard rocks havebeen broken up by frost, eroded by running water, bat-tered by hard fragments borne by wind and has formed dunes from particles of rock, runningwater has carried pebbles, gravel, sand, and mud, anddeposited them in seas and lakes. Earth movementshave changed the contour of the land. They have de-pressed land surfaces, and raised ocean bottoms abovethe level of the water. Beds of stratified depositsformed under water are now exposed and available tohuman uses. The fossil-hunter finds in them recordsof the flora and fauna of the ages in which they weredeposited. Earth movements are slow and are taking place to-day, although the general PlATE COMFREY {Symphytum officinaK), Orot-r BORAGIN/ICEM. THE STORY OF THE EARTH 223 public is not aware of them, and the effects they pro-duce in a single lifetime are not observable. Yet theresults of age-long slow movement are stupendous. In my Romance of the Rocks I represented the storyof the earth as being, so to say, inscribed in severalbooks, each book containing chapters, and each chapterbeing composed of sections. The books are made ofstone. Each book tells the story of an Era embracingvast time, and each chapter deals with a Period of theEra. Again, each section of a chapter has referenceto a subdivision of a Period. But to make the similecorrect one must conceive of all the books as beingintegral parts of one great volume, the theme of whichis continuous throughout. We know of no suddenendings or capricious restarts in Nature, no changes ofpolicy, no alteration of law. Deve
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectbotany, bookyear1915
