there. The rain drops have now gotten back to the beach where they
take up again the work of grinding the soil.

The work of moving water can be seen in almost any road or cultivated
field during or just after a rain, and particularly on the hillsides,
where often the soil is loosened and carried from higher to lower
parts, making barren sand and clay banks of fertile hillsides and
destroying the fertility of the bottom lands below.

We have already noticed the work of freezing water in splitting small
and large fragments from the rocks. Water moving over the surface of
the earth in a solid form, or ice, was at an earlier period in the
history of the earth one of the most powerful agencies in soil
formation. Away up in Greenland and on the northern border of this
continent the temperature is so low that most if not all of the
moisture that falls on the earth falls as snow. This snow has piled up
until it has become very deep and very heavy. The great weight has
packed the bottom of this great snow bank to ice. On the mountains
where the land was not level the masses of snow and ice, centuries
ago, began to slide down the slopes and finally formed great rivers of
solid water or moving ice.

The geologists tell us that at one time a great river of ice extended
from the Arctic region as far south as central Pennsylvania and from
New England to the Rocky Mountains. This vast river was very deep and
very heavy and into its under surface were frozen sand, pebbles,
larger stones and even great rocks. Thus it acted as a great rasp or
file and did an immense amount of work grinding rocks and making
soils. It ground down mountains and carried great beds of soil from
one place to another. When this great ice river melted, it dropped its