could flex a stratum of rock, because there is not time enough, even
if there were power enough. "A low temperature acting gradually,"
says my geology, "during an indefinite age would produce results
that could not be otherwise brought about even through greater
heat." "Give us time," say the great mechanical forces, "and we will
show you the immobile rocks and your rigid mountain chains as
flexible as a piece of leather." "Give us time," say the dews and
the rains and the snowflakes, "and we will make you a garden out of
those same stubborn rocks and frowning ledges." "Give us time," says
Life, starting with her protozoans in the old Cambrian seas, "and I
will not stop till I have peopled the earth with myriad forms and
crowned them all with man."

Dana thinks that had "a man been living during the changes that
produced the coal, he would not have suspected their progress," so
slow and quiet were they. It is probable that parts of our own
sea-coast are sinking and other parts rising as rapidly as the
oscillation of the land and sea went on that resulted in the laying
down of the coal measures.

An eternity to man is but a day in the cosmic process. In the face
of geologic time, man's appearance upon the earth as man, with a
written history, is something that has just happened; it was in this
morning's paper, we read of it at breakfast. As evolution goes, it
will not be old news yet for a hundred thousand years or so, and by
that time, what will he have done, if he goes on at his present rate
of accelerated speed? Probably he will not have caught the gods of
evolution at their work, or witnessed the origin of species by
natural descent, these things are too slow for him; but he will
certainly have found out many things that we are all eager to know.