No trace is left of their destructive powers, save the huge,
unstratified, unfossiliferous deposits of clay and stones and
bowlders, locked away between great layers of the sedimentary rocks.
Can it be that there wanders through immeasurable space, upon an
orbit of such size that millions of years are required to complete
it, some monstrous luminary, so vast that when it returns to us it
fills a large part of the orbit which the earth describes around the
sun, and showers down upon us deluges of _d?bris_, while it fills the
world with flame? And are these recurring strata of stones and clay
and bowlders, written upon these widely separated pages of the
geologic volume, the record of its oft and regularly recurring
visitations?
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 480.
2. Ibid., p. 481.]
{p. 436}
Who shall say? Science will yet compare minutely the composition of
these different conglomerates. No secret can escape discovery when
the light of a world's intelligence is brought to bear upon it.
And even here we stumble over a still more tremendous fact:
It has been supposed that the primeval granite was the molten crust
of the original glowing ball of the earth, when it first hardened as
it cooled.
Pages:
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616