THE STRANGE ADVENTURES
OF A PEBBLE
STRANGE ADVENTURES IN NATURE'S WONDERLANDS
THE
STRANGE ADVENTURES
OF A PEBBLE
BY
HALLAM HAWKSWORTH
AUTHOR OF "THE ADVENTURES OF A GRAIN OF DUST"
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON
Copyright, 1921, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
A
THE SCRIBNER PRESS
PREFACE
The purpose of this little book is to present the chief features in the
strange story of the pebbles; and so of the larger pebble we call the
earth. It is hoped that readers of various ages will be entertained,
without suspecting that they are being taught.
Several things led the author to believe that such a book might be
wanted.
(_a_) The circumstances under which it was written.
(_b_) The fact that there seemed to be an opportunity for improvement
not only in the popular presentation of scientific topics but in the
character and method of review questions and suggestions following such
topics in school texts.
(_c_) Experience has shown that pictures may be made to perform a much
more vital function in teaching than is usually assigned to them in the
text-books.[1]
[Footnote 1: On this subject I cannot do better, perhaps, than quote
from an article on "The Picture Book in Education," contributed to the
New York _Evening Post_:
"We learn more easily by looking at things than by memorizing words
about them. The principle, of course, holds whether the image which the
eye receives comes from the object itself or only from the picture of
the object. Therefore we should learn to read pictures as well as books.
"New York has long recognized the added efficiency in the teaching
process to be obtained from the use of pictures. The Division of
Visual Instruction, established thirty years ago, has an international
reputation for the extent of its equipment, the simplicity of its
methods, and the excellence of its results."]
(_d_) In the particular field to which this story relates comparatively
little has been written either for reading in the family circle or for
use in the school; although the relation of physiography, not only to
human history and political and commercial geography but to the whole
immense realm of natural science, is so basic and its great principles
and processes so striking in their appeal to curiosity and our sense of
the grand and the dramatic.[2]
[Footnote 2: Commenting on the need of popular literature dealing with
earth science, Doctor Shaler says:
"In no other fields are large and important truths so distinctly
related to human interests so readily traced; yet the treatises dealing
with these truths are few in number and generally recondite."]
What here appear as chapters were originally little talks for the
evening entertainment of the juvenile members of a certain family and
the neighboring children, who were attracted by what came to be known
as the "pebble parties," during the season at Mount Desert Island. They
are here given in substantially the form in which they first saw the
light. While they proved entirely intelligible to boys and girls of
eight and ten they seemed equally interesting to the older members of
the audience, including a youth of eighteen in his last year of high
school, whose comments, in the language of his caste, deserve to share
the credit for whatever of whimsical humor and colloquial style the
author may have succeeded in incorporating into the narrative.
The familiar tone, the number and variety of the chapters, the
sub-heads and marginal captions and the character and treatment of
the illustrations have a similar origin. They represent the variety
of aspects under which it was found necessary to present the facts in
order to hold a capricious audience whose attendance and attention
were wholly voluntary.
The use of unfamiliar words and scientific terms has been avoided as
much as possible, consistent with the educational purpose of the book.
It is to be remembered that educators do not consider it good practice
to omit all words which children cannot understand at sight; the theory
being that it is by the judicious introduction of words not current
on the playground that the intellectual interests and capacities of
children are enlarged. With regard to scientific topics (it is further
argued) a large proportion of the classics of science written for the
general reader and which boys and girls of fourteen and upward should
be able to read easily and with pleasure--Shaler, Darwin, and Wallace,
for example--contain quite a few scientific terms; and these it would
be well that young people learn from context or definition in their
previous reading in works of a more elementary nature.
Moreover, while younger children will read a book the general character
of which interests them, even though they do not understand every word
or get all the thoughts in it, sophisticated youths of the high-school
age will have none of it, if they suspect that they are being talked
down to. In the story of the pebble the aim, accordingly, has been not
only to make a book that young people will not outgrow but one that
will be of some interest to adults, particularly to travellers.
Not only in the text is special emphasis laid on the interpretation
of landscape, but the character, treatment, and arrangement of the
illustrations is intended to train the eye to read the story of the
earth drama as recorded in the forms of valley, mountain, field,
and shore. And--since the earth is not, after all, a mere geological
specimen--these illustrations include reproductions of paintings,
scenery as interpreted by the poet and the artist.
To create an appropriate atmosphere and so add to the vividness of
conception, the twelve chapters each deal with a seasonable subject.
Relation to the Text-Book
The relation of this book to the formal study of physiography or
geology in the schools will be apparent. The classified and exhaustive
treatment of the text-book, while so admirably adapted to organize
knowledge already acquired, or reward an appetite already aroused, is
not at all adapted for creating this appetite in the first place; a
thing so essential to true progress in education. For example, in a
text-book, the many aspects of glaciers and their work, which are here
distributed in a number of sections (as the discovery of these aspects
was distributed in time), are usually dealt with in a single chapter or
series of chapters, whose nature the reader at once gathers from the
title, "The Work of the Glaciers."
The young reader or school pupil is thus deprived of the element of
surprise, of the pleasure of following an unfolding mystery, which was
at once the inspiration and reward of men of science to whom we owe
these discoveries.
If left to the text-book alone, the student acquires his facts too
rapidly and too easily. The result is a loss of both pleasure and
profit. The movements of the glaciers and the nature of the movement,
which gave Agassiz seven years of keen delight to ascertain, the pupil
acquires through his text-book in something like seven minutes, and
without either the pleasure or the profit of Agassiz' gradual and
inductive acquirement of this knowledge.
In other words, to begin the study of a given science by means of a
text-book, without previously arousing interest in the subject, is to
assume a greater zeal on the part of school pupils and college students
than, it is reasonable to assume, was possessed by the scientists
themselves. It was the attraction of the unknown rather than the rapid
acquirement of the known that drew them on to their grand discoveries,
their illuminating generalizations.
In recording the pebble's story the endeavor has been to cause the
reader to come upon the data on which these generalizations were based,
piece by piece, here a little and there a little--as did the scientists
themselves.
Interesting as the mere facts of physiographic science finally become
to the trained scientist they make little appeal either to the average
boy or the average adult, if he must first come in contact with them as
they are presented in the text-book; classified, catalogued, labelled
in scientific terms and laid away (as it seems to him) in chapter,
section, and paragraph, like specimens in a museum.
Since this book is concerned mainly with landscapes and the story of
the forces that helped to shape them it does not undertake to deal
with mineralogy. Within the fields thus defined it is believed that
the larger facts, the great moving causes of things, have been covered
as thoroughly as they are in the average elementary text-book. In
addition, subjects in great variety are touched upon which do not come
within the province of the text-book, but are such as naturally suggest
themselves in the broader and richer discussion of such topics in the
conversation of cultivated people.
Hide and Seek in the Library
Since the whole purpose of the school is to prepare for the larger
world of life and books outside the school, special attention is
invited to the department of questions and suggestions following each
chapter. As indicated in the introduction to the first of the series,
an effort has been made to capitalize the fact that young people enjoy
conundrums and curious quests in the field of books quite as well as
mere passive reading.
The treatment is somewhat discursive, and in this and other respects
is intended to be more like the conversation of cultivated parents
with their children than like the review questions of a text-book; the
review element being incidental, in recalling the topics out of which
these questions and suggestions grow. The correlations in the most
modern texts lead into equally wide and varied fields.
If he has succeeded in the aim thus indicated, the author believes this
department may easily prove one of the most interesting as well as
educatively useful features of the work.
H. H.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. _In the Beginning_ 1
II. _The Winter that Lasted All Summer_ 20
III. _The Soul of the Spring and the Lands of Eternal Snow_ 41
IV. _The April Rains and the Work of the Rivers_ 66
V. _The Fairyland of Change_ 93
VI. _The Secrets of the Hills_ 113
VII. _The Stones of the Field_ 145
VIII. _The Desert_ 161
IX. _In the Lands of the Lakes_ 191
X. _The Autumn Winds and the Rock Mills of the Sea_ 212
XI. _The Handwriting on the Walls_ 234
XII. _The End of the World_ 260
_Index_ 279
THE ILLUSTRATIONS
In furtherance of the idea referred to in the preface, that a far more
effective use may be made of pictures in teaching than is usual, a
very extended use has been made of them in "The Strange Adventures of
a Pebble," and, moreover, these pictures have been made to talk, as it
were, by means of extended analysis and comment upon their significant
features; this for the double purpose of teaching important facts, as
only pictures can teach, and of stimulating the invaluable habit of
observation and of logical reasoning about things observed.
One of the main purposes of the book, as stated in the preface, is to
stimulate interest in further reading and study on the many subjects to
which it relates.
The author wishes to make special acknowledgment of the co-operation of
the editor of _St. Nicholas_ and the following publishers in supplying
the illustrations on the pages indicated:
The Macmillan Co.: 11, 29, 36, 41, 52, 83, 108, 121, 132, 145, 152,
168, 173, 195, 221, 225, 226, 235, 240, 249, 254, 257. The Century Co.:
For the following from the _St. Nicholas_ magazine: 38, 47, 70, 184,
199.
D. Appleton and Co.: 12, 22, 60, 97, 102, 136, 141, 224, 236, 241, 243,
245, 247, 252, 257. G. P. Putnam's Sons: 59, 105, 147. E. P. Dutton &
Co.: 157. Henry Holt & Co.: 37, 84, 149, 193, 207, 250. Silver Burdett
Co.: 28. _World's Work_: 79. _Geological Survey_: 13, 23, 114, 130,
194, 238. _Wisconsin Survey_: 33. _Encyclopædia Britannica_: 256.
THE STRANGE ADVENTURES
OF A PEBBLE
CHAPTER I
(JANUARY)
In the beginning the earth was without form and void.
--_Genesis_ 1:1-2.
IN THE BEGINNING
I. How the Worlds and Myself Were Born
I've been through fire and water, _I_ tell you! From my earliest
pebblehood the wildest things you could imagine have been happening to
this world of ours, and I have been right in the midst of them.
HOW MR. APOLLO TURNED ON THE LIGHT
The first scenes of all in my strange, eventful history remind me of
the old Greek story about Apollo and that boy of his--Phaeton. Apollo's
business, you remember, was to take the sun through the skies every day
in his golden chariot, so that people could see to get about. It was a
ticklish job, as the horses were fiery. As a rule, however, things went
fairly well. To be sure, there were overdone days occasionally, just
as there are now. Then the crops would wither and the birds and brooks
stop singing. This, as the little Greek boys and girls believed, was
because Apollo's horses ran too near the earth.
[Illustration: HOW MR. APOLLO TURNED ON THE LIGHT
Behold the sun-god starting on his daily round! Aurora, Goddess of
the Dawn, precedes him scattering flowers, the lovely colors of the
morning sky. The other figures are the early hours.
The Greek poets used to play with these myth stories a good deal,
changing them to suit their poetic fancy. Theocritus, for example,
in a beautiful fragment that has come down to us, paints this
picture of the breaking day:
"Dawn, up from the sea to the sky,
By her fleet-footed steeds was drawn."
You see, according to this poet's conception, Miss Dawn had a
chariot of her own.
]
But nothing serious happened until one time Phaeton persuaded father to
let him drive the sun chariot for a day. The horses, feeling at once a
new and weak hand on the reins, tore out of the regular road and went
dashing right and left. They even got so near the North Pole that the
ice began to melt. They fairly flew down toward the earth, set the
mountains smoking, and dried up all the springs and most of the rivers.
THEN THINGS BEGAN TO HAPPEN
They dried up a certain great lake, so that there is to this day the
Libyan Desert in Africa, where this lake used to be. They made the very
sea shrink so that there were "wide naked plains where once its billows
rose."
Finally Mother Earth called on Jupiter Pluvius, as god of thunder,
rain, and storms, to stop Phaeton and the runaways and put out the fire.
Struck by a bolt of lightning poor Phaeton fell headlong from the
skies, and a world-wide rain put out the world-wide fire.
[Illustration: _From a cameo by Da Vinci_
THE FALL OF PHAETON
(Museum, Florence)
]
Now, would you believe it, this queer old Old World story may really be
true in its way. Of course there never was a sun god and no spoiled boy
who did just that thing; although many spoiled boys have _tried_ to set
the world on fire and failed because they thought it would be so easy.
But the earth really has been on fire in a sense; that is, has melted
from the heat. And in parts where you would least suspect--the rocks.
There's where I got into it. And some of these rocks, not more than
ten miles[3] from where you live, are either still molten, or continue
to melt from time to time; as you can see when lava comes pouring from
volcanoes, such as those of Hawaii.
[Footnote 3: Straight down, of course.]
In the days of the Apollo story most men still thought the earth was
the centre of the universe; that the sun, moon, and stars moved around
it. But Pythagoras, one of the Greek philosophers, had formed a general
notion of the truth that the earth is only one planet in a great
system. Then, along in the Sixteenth Century, came Copernicus, and by
mathematical calculation--he was a fine hand at figures--began to find
out things that showed the wise old Greek had made a happy guess. Then
Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and others, each working on different parts of
the problem, finally settled the question. They found that there are
just worlds of worlds, and that ours is only one of them.
* * * * *
About the time of the American Revolution a great French mathematician,
Laplace, worked out a story of the origin of the earth which is,
briefly, this:
What we know now as the solar system--the sun with its attendant
worlds--was once a single big ball of fiery gas, a nebula. As this
nebula cooled it shrank, and as it shrank it whirled faster because
it had a smaller track in which to turn, and with an equal amount of
force would, of course, get around oftener. The faster it whirled
the more the outside of it tended to fly off, as water flies off a
whirling grindstone or as a stone flies from a sling. This centrifugal
or "fly-away" force was greatest at the sun's equator, and it threw
off big rings. Afterward, around some centre of greater density in
these rings, the gaseous particles in the rest of the ring gathered, so
forming spheres. Then some of the spheres themselves threw off rings in
the same way which became what are called satellites. The moon, which
is our satellite, Laplace supposed to have originated in this way.
The ring which Saturn still wears he thought would some day become a
satellite.
[Illustration:
_By permission of the Mount Wilson Observatory_
WATCHING THE MAKING OF WORLDS
At first you won't see anything very striking about this picture,
perhaps; but doesn't it give you something of a thrill to be told
that you are here looking not only at the making of a _world_,
but of worlds of worlds? A whole solar system! In the course of
unthinkable time that big, round ball in the center will be the
sun, and what appear to be little knots wrapped close around
it--they are really far from each other and from the sun--will
become rounded worlds like ours. They will be forced into roundness
by their own gravity, pulling toward their centers. They don't look
any farther apart than the strands in a little sister's braided
hair, do they? But remember how small this picture is compared with
what it represents. What here show as little dark lines, separating
the embryo worlds, are in reality vast spaces, like those you see
between the stars at night--millions and millions and millions of
miles!
]
So, you see, the myth story of Phaeton foreshadowed, in a way, the
science story of Laplace. For, according to the Laplace theory, the
world _was_ on fire; and a big rain storm, lasting for ages, with
plenty of thunder and lightning, did help put it out.
This theory of Laplace was long accepted as the true one. Indeed, it
was only yesterday, comparatively, that other explanations were offered
as to how we came to have a world to stand on. The broadest of these
new theories--the one that undertakes to explain the most--is that of
Professor Chamberlin, of the University of Chicago.
[Illustration: THE SUN AND HIS PEBBLE WORLDS
However the worlds of our solar system may have been made, when
they were done there was the sun in the centre and his worlds
travelling around him in their ordered orbits. Nearest the sun is
Mercury. Then Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus; then,
finally, Neptune nearly 3,000,000,000 miles away and with an orbit
so big that Christmas comes only once in 60,000 years!
]
YOU CAN SEE THESE WORLDS IN THE MAKING
Owing to the more powerful telescopes of to-day, and the amount of
exploring among the worlds that has been going on since the time of
Laplace, several things have been discovered that have brought his
theory into question. For one thing, many more nebulæ have been found
in space than were known when Laplace worked out his great conception,
and among them all not one has been found with a central mass
surrounded by a ring. Moreover, our sharp-eyed telescopes show that
Saturn's ring, which Laplace thought was a solid mass, is really made
up of a great number of small satellites: baby worlds. The greater
number of these nebulæ are like the ones you see in the illustration
on page 5. They consist of very bright centres with spirals streaming
out from opposite sides. Just take a look at the picture. Doesn't the
shape of those spirals suggest that the central mass is whirling? And
notice the little white lumps here and there. The thinner, veil-like
portions of the mass, as well as the "lumps," are supposed to be made
of particles of matter, but the lumps to be more condensed. All the
particles, big and little, are known to be revolving about the central
mass, much as the earth revolves about the sun. The little white lumps,
or knots, in the filmy skein are supposed to be worlds in the making.
Being larger than the other particles, they draw the smaller to them,
according to the same law of gravitation which makes every unsupported
thing on earth fall to the ground, because the earth is so much bigger
than anything there is on it. Since these bright little lumps behave
so much like the worlds we know as planets, and yet are relatively
so small, they are called planetessimals, or "little planets." So
Professor Chamberlin's idea of the origin of worlds is known as the
"planetessimal theory."
[Illustration: HOW YOU CAN WATCH THE WORLD TURN ROUND
Timepieces, you know, are really machines for keeping track of the
apparent movement of the sun. Here is a device, as simple as a
sun-dial and much simpler than a clock, by which you can record the
actual motion of the earth. Sprinkle the surface of the water in a
bowl with chalk dust. On this, sift from a piece of paper powdered
charcoal or pencil dust, so as to make a clean-cut band extending
across the centre and over the edge of the bowl. In the course of
several hours you will find that the black band has swept round
from east to west, because the water has stood still while the bowl
has been carried from west to east by the whirling world.
]
According to this theory the earth was once a mere baby world like
those white lumps, and grew by gathering in its smaller neighbors from
time to time by the power of gravitation. The larger it grew the more
particles of solid matter it could draw to itself. Then it drew larger
masses, for with increased mass came an increased pull of gravity. In
the same way the earth is still growing, for it is thought that the
shooting stars or meteors we see at night are little planets being
gathered in.
II. How the Continents Came Up Out of the Sea
And before I got to be myself at all, while I was still only a part of
the big pebble called the Earth, your geography and I lay at the bottom
of the sea.
For ages and ages!
This is one of the stories you will find in the literature of science,
of how, along with North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa,
and Australia--have I left out any?--I came to land and brought your
geography with me.
I remember hearing a pretty young lady say, once upon a time:
"There," said she, "I'm through with geography forever!"
You see, although she had passed with marks around 90, she still had
the idea that geography is a book. You and I know, of course, that the
real geography isn't a book at all. It's the world itself.
PUTTING THE CONTINENTS ON THE GLOBE
But there was a time when there was no land. It was all water, and
the continents were lifted into their places, much as you model a
continent in making a relief map; they were sketched out and then
filled in. North America, for example. First of all up came that mass
in the northeast in what is now Canada; the Laurentian Highlands, as
they are called in your geography. They rose very, very slowly, you
understand, only a few feet in a thousand years; for Nature has all
the time there is and never hurries. These highlands (they are really
granite mountains worn down), along with the other rock formations of
our continent, are supposed to be the oldest land on the earth. The
continents of Europe and the rest were born later. So you see Columbus
didn't discover the New World at all; he really came from the New World
and discovered the Old!
Next after the highlands north of the St. Lawrence up came the tops of
the mountains you see running along the eastern coast, what we now
call the Appalachians. Then the Rocky Mountains began to raise their
heads and looked eastward toward their brother mountains across a great
mediterranean sea, the bottom of which is now the Mississippi Valley.
Mediterranean means "middle of the land."
[Illustration: HOW YOUR GEOGRAPHY ROSE OUT OF THE SEA]
ADMITTING NEW STATES TO THE MAP
Wisconsin, into which I moved from the Laurentian Highlands in later
years, was on the lower end of a long, thin tongue of rock reaching out
from these highlands to the southwest. While Wisconsin went on growing,
the Alleghanies came up and brought some Middle Atlantic geography with
them. Up with all these early settler mountains came, in the course of
time, the beginnings of neighbor States. All these big, barren rocks
(as they were then), rising and ever rising, age after age, spread
more surface to the sun. And the sun, and the wind, and the frost,
followed by the lowest forms of plant life--the Adams of the vegetable
world--gradually worked the surface of the rock into soil; and so, as
we may say, got ready for the spring plowing.
[Illustration: LANDS THE SEA HAS SWALLOWED
Parts of the continents as they used to be but which are now
beneath the waters are here shown. Compare this with the globe map
in your geography. It is estimated that there are 10,000,000 square
miles of this land. You'll hear more about this swallowing habit of
the sea in Chapter X; but, as you will learn, there's nothing to be
frightened about.
]
By this constant rising and building on of the soil the foundations
of our States grew out toward one another in order, according to the
constitution of things, "to form a more perfect union." The United
States, at a time which, we may say, corresponds to "The Expansion
Period" in your school history, grew southward from Wisconsin and
westward from the Appalachians until they made continuous land; and
there was your Ohio and Indiana and the rest of the North Central
group. Below, toward the south, were more big stone islands here
and there, the first sketches or blockings out of the Southern
States. Florida seems to have been added later, as a final touch; an
afterthought, as one of my Wisconsin neighbors puts it. And it was
much enlarged by those remarkable little world builders, the corals.
Mexico and Central America, of course, are a part of the Rocky Mountain
system.
[Illustration:
_From Gilbert and Brigham's "An Introduction to Physical
Geography." By permission of D. Appleton and Company_
BUT WON'T WE GO UNDER AGAIN?
These little people of the sea-floor furnish one of the most
assuring evidences we have that although the continents rose out of
the sea, they will never go under the sea again. These are shell
creatures found in the slime dredged from the bottom of the deepest
parts of the sea. The shells of creatures that live near shore are
found in abundance in our rocks, but these types are found only
in the deepest seas. So, since the deep down-wrinklings of the
earth that make the sea-basins have never risen, it is probable
they never will; and consequently that the up-wrinkles--the
continents--will continue to stay above the waters.
]
It's a wonderful old story, isn't it? But more wonderful still, it
always seemed to me, is the story of how they found all this out.
Who do you suppose first told about it? The last people you would ever
think of, I'm sure--the oysters!
WHAT THE OYSTERS TOLD XENOPHANES
It sounds like a passage from "Alice in Wonderland," or "Through the
Looking-Glass," doesn't it? But it's a fact. Away back, more than
2,000 years ago, a wise Greek called Xenophanes, who lived in a place
called Colophon, and so was called Xenophanes of Colophon, said that he
thought the rocks of the mountain sides must once have been under the
sea because of the oyster shells that were found embedded in many of
them.
[Illustration: HOW THE OYSTERS TOLD THE GREAT SECRET
Here is a good example of the thing that led wise old Xenophanes of
Colophon to make the startling assertion that the mountains were
once at the bottom of the sea. These are the shells of oysters
embedded in limestone--which, by the way, the shells of the oysters
themselves helped make--and this piece of stone is from the top of
a high mountain.
]
"For," said Xenophanes of Colophon, "how else could the oyster shells
have got there? Who ever heard of oysters climbing a mountain?"
Another evidence that lands come up out of the sea is this: Even before
the days of Scott and Maryatt and Fenimore Cooper, men--and, of course,
boys--were interested in caves that face upon the sea. They are such
jolly places for pirates, and for boys playing pirate, and for mermaids
drying their hair. It was plain that down where the waves in storms
could reach them the sea itself bored out these caves. But how about
those caves in the cliffs high above the waves? The sea must have made
them, too, once upon a time when the land was lower in the water. Then
the land was raised.
Still more striking was the fact that not only caves but old sea
beaches were found on hill and mountain slopes far from the sea,
sometimes hundreds of miles inland. You can tell the old beaches by
their shape and the way in which the pebbles are sorted by size, just
as you find them on beaches to-day.
THE BAKED APPLE AND THE BULGING WORLD
The causes of the rise and fall of the sea coasts are many, and
there are things about these movements not yet understood. By what
wonderful machinery, then (we might naturally ask), were the continents
themselves lifted out of the sea? To this, which would seem much the
harder question of the two, the answer is simple; as simple as a baked
apple. You know an apple that goes into the oven with a smooth, neat
skin comes out covered with wrinkles. Now suppose, instead of a little,
hot apple, covered with a thin skin, you have a big, hot earth covered
with a thick crust of stone, and the inside of the earth shrinking all
the time as the inside of the apple shrank away from its skin. The rock
skin would wrinkle, and the wrinkles, rising out of the seas that then
covered it everywhere, would make continents.
[Illustration: THE RISE AND FALL OF JUPITER SERAPIS
In this account of the ups and downs of land and sea I must tell
you the story of Jupiter Serapis. In the days of the Romans this
temple, for his honor, stood on the seashore near Naples. Of that
temple only three pillars remain, but they answer a very important
question. On these pillars, over twenty feet above sea-level, is a
belt of holes bored in the stone by a certain shelled sea-creature,
one of the barnacle family; so evidently these pillars must, at
some time, have sunk, as shown in the second picture, and then
risen again, as shown in the third, which represents them as they
stand to-day.
Another interesting thing is that the third picture--observe--shows
a volcano that isn't in the other two. Following a series of
earthquake shocks in 1538 the earth opened and out popped hot
stones and ashes and built themselves into a small volcano right
before everybody; for it was all done in a short time, and you may
be sure the frightened people kept their eyes on it, and they named
it Monte Nuovo, which is Italian for "New Mountain."
]
"And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together
into one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so."
According to the planetessimal theory the way in which the seas were
made was this:
Owing to the collision--the "bang"--of the planetessimals against the
earth, and against each other as they met at the "terminal station,"
heat was generated. The compression, the squeezing together, of the
earth from its own weight--the gravity pull of the whole mass toward
the centre--generated still more heat, and the heat and pressure drove
the gases out of the rock. These gases included hydrogen and oxygen.
These two gases cooling and combining themselves, in a way they have,
became water, and there were other gases, such as nitrogen and carbon
gas, that helped to make the air.
WHEN THE SEAS WERE ALL IN THE SKY
At first the water was in the form of dense clouds of overhanging vapor
which, growing bigger and bigger, finally fell in rain. The heat, made
by the pressure of the outside of the earth toward the centre as the
earth kept growing, caused volcanic explosions. But there were far
more volcanoes in those early days when the earth was settling down,
and being "settled up," as it were, by these energetic pioneers in the
fields of space--the planetessimals--and the surface became pitted
with craters. In these great catch basins the rain was stored, and,
as for ages the rain kept falling faster than the vapor rose from the
earth, many of these bodies of water united, and so formed the lakes,
the river systems, the oceans, and the seas.
THE FOUR GREAT FEATURES OF THE BIBLE STORY
All of which, while it differs so much from the theory of Laplace, does
not affect the Bible outline of the origin of the earth. For these four
great things must still have been: (1) an earth without form, and void;
(2) a great deep; (3) upon its face darkness from the continuing masses
of black rain-laden clouds which overhung it and shut out the sun; (4)
the final dividing up of supply between the vapor of the clouds ("the
waters above the earth") and "the waters upon the earth," so that at
last the dark cloud curtain disappeared, and the sun began to rule the
day. "Let there be light."
* * * * *
But good-by to Phaeton and the story of an original glowing ball which
cooled off on the outside. If the earth grew bit by bit instead of
being whirled off in one fiery mass by the sun it was never any hotter
than it is now, if as hot. It grew hot by being pressed together by its
own weight, and by the blows of additional little worlds as they fell
upon it.
But on one thing everybody agrees, that the rocks, as you go toward the
earth's centre, have been and still are in a molten state; that this
rock, when it cools, becomes granite, all full of little crystals like
a lump of sugar, and that the Granites are one of the F. F. E.'s.[4]
[Footnote 4: First Families on Earth.]
I, as you see, am a Granite. So, besides going through fire and
water--yes, and ice, as you will learn--and having many strange and
wearing adventures both by land and sea--I'm "awfully" old. Older than
you think. I looked it up in the family record called the "Geological
Column"--just the other day. That column gives my age as "80+." This
means I'm 80,000,000 years old, going on 81! (The _plus_ sign, in
geology language, means "going on"; or, "and then some," as a certain
slangful high school freshman puts it.)
But I don't think I _show_ my age. Do you?
HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY
Who wants to sit and be talked to all the time? When boys and girls
are playing games, the greatest pleasure is in taking part, and
it's the same way in the Wonderland of Books. Books mean most to
those who "get into the game"; who help chase after the answers to
things. This hunting for answers up and down among the books is one
of the interesting games we're going to play; and those of you who
don't come in will miss a lot of fun. That's all _I've_ got to say!
Let's begin like this:
* * * * *
In the Greek myth stories what else was Mr. Apollo supposed to do
for the world and its people besides turning on the light?[5]
[Footnote 5: Answers to all these questions at the ends of chapters
will be found in books you can easily get hold of--encyclopædias,
dictionaries, and school-books; or books usually found in home, school,
or public libraries. Words in parenthesis or italics indicate the
headings where the information referred to will be found.]
Why doesn't the force of the earth, whirling along as it does at 19
miles a second, cause the wind to blow us all away? (_Earth._)
What is the difference between a planet and a sun?
How does the earth compare in size with its brother planets of the
sun family?
How often would Christmas come around if we lived on the moon?
What causes different phases of the moon?
Why may we be said to have eclipses of the moon every month?
"Moon" and "month" sound a good deal alike when you come to think
of it. Don't you wonder why? "Moon" comes from a word meaning "to
measure." You'll find the rest of the word-story of the moon in any
dictionary that is big enough to tell about the origin of words.
By the way--speaking of the timekeepers in the sky--don't forget
to look up the lives of the great astronomers mentioned in this
chapter. You will find, among other things, how Galileo, when only
eighteen years of age, helped to give us our clocks and watches by
counting his pulse-beats while watching a hanging lamp swing back
and forth in the Cathedral of Pisa; how he found out who "The Man
in the Moon" really is and what the "Milky Way" is made of; how he
invented the wonderful glass for playing hide and seek among the
worlds, and with it found four moons in one night!
Yes, and how do you suppose he found that the sun is going round
and round like a top, just as the earth does? It was the _simplest_
thing! You'll see!
Old Father Science may be said to be a Santa Claus who keeps a
curiosity-shop. His pack is not only full of curious things but he
is always "springing surprises on us," as our High School Boy puts
it. For example, one of the most curious as well as picturesque
evidences that great stretches of land sink under the sea from
time to time is furnished by the English swallows. Like many other
wealthy people, they spend their winters in Algiers, and they find
their way over the Mediterranean, not by any lands they can see
between coast and coast--for there _are_ none--but by lands that
_used_ to be there, thousands upon thousands of years ago.
But how do the swallows know? They don't. Is it instinct? No.
(Whatever instinct is!) Then why do they do it? Look it up and
you'll see.[6] Yes, and you'll see that we have habits that _we_
get in the same way; our habits of bowing, for example, because
it's the custom, although few people know how it originated.
[Footnote 6: "Colin Clout's Calendar," by Grant Allen.]