Dearest Nature, strong and kind,
Whispered, 'Darling, never mind!
To-morrow they will wear another face,
The founder thou; these are thy race!'"

I fancy Emerson would be surprised and probably displeased at the
use I have made of his lines. I remember once hearing him say that
his teacher in such matters as I am here touching upon was Agassiz,
and not Darwin. Yet did he not write that audacious line about "the
worm striving to be man"? And Nature certainly took his "little man"
by the hand and led him forward, and on the morrow the rest of the
animal creation "wore another face."




III



In my geological studies I have had a good deal of trouble with the
sedimentary rocks, trying to trace their genealogy and getting them
properly fathered and mothered. I do not think the geologists fully
appreciate what a difficult problem the origin of these rocks
presents to the lay mind. They bulk so large, while the mass of
original crystalline rocks from which they are supposed to have been
derived is so small in comparison. In the case of our own continent
we have, to begin with, about two million of square miles of
Archaean rocks in detached lines and masses, rising here and there
above the primordial ocean; a large triangular mass in Canada, and