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+Project Gutenberg Etext Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley
+#7 in our series by Charles Kingsley
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+Madam How and Lady Why, or First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children
+
+by Charles Kingsley
+
+April, 1999  [Etext #1697]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley
+*******This file should be named hwwhy10.txt or hwwhy10.zip*******
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+This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+from the 1889 Macmillan and Co. edition.
+
+
+
+
+
+MADAM HOW AND LADY WHY
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+
+My dear boys,--When I was your age, there were no such children's
+books as there are now.  Those which we had were few and dull, and
+the pictures in them ugly and mean:  while you have your choice of
+books without number, clear, amusing, and pretty, as well as
+really instructive, on subjects which were only talked of fifty
+years ago by a few learned men, and very little understood even by
+them.  So if mere reading of books would make wise men, you ought
+to grow up much wiser than us old fellows.  But mere reading of
+wise books will not make you wise men:  you must use for
+yourselves the tools with which books are made wise; and that is--
+your eyes, and ears, and common sense.
+
+Now, among those very stupid old-fashioned boys' books was one
+which taught me that; and therefore I am more grateful to it than
+if it had been as full of wonderful pictures as all the natural
+history books you ever saw.  Its name was Evenings at Home; and in
+it was a story called "Eyes and no Eyes;" a regular old-fashioned,
+prim, sententious story; and it began thus:-
+
+"Well, Robert, where have you been walking this afternoon?" said
+Mr. Andrews to one of his pupils at the close of a holiday.
+
+Oh--Robert had been to Broom Heath, and round by Camp Mount, and
+home through the meadows.  But it was very dull.  He hardly saw a
+single person.  He had much rather have gone by the turnpike-road.
+
+Presently in comes Master William, the other pupil, dressed, I
+suppose, as wretched boys used to be dressed forty years ago, in a
+frill collar, and skeleton monkey-jacket, and tight trousers
+buttoned over it, and hardly coming down to his ancles; and low
+shoes, which always came off in sticky ground; and terribly dirty
+and wet he is:  but he never (he says) had such a pleasant walk in
+his life; and he has brought home his handkerchief (for boys had
+no pockets in those days much bigger than key-holes) full of
+curiosities.
+
+He has got a piece of mistletoe, wants to know what it is; and he
+has seen a woodpecker, and a wheat-ear, and gathered strange
+flowers on the heath; and hunted a peewit because he thought its
+wing was broken, till of course it led him into a bog, and very
+wet he got.  But he did not mind it, because he fell in with an
+old man cutting turf, who told him all about turf-cutting, and
+gave him a dead adder.  And then he went up a hill, and saw a
+grand prospect; and wanted to go again, and make out the geography
+of the country from Cary's old county maps, which were the only
+maps in those days.  And then, because the hill was called Camp
+Mount, he looked for a Roman camp, and found one; and then he went
+down to the river, saw twenty things more; and so on, and so on,
+till he had brought home curiosities enough, and thoughts enough,
+to last him a week.
+
+Whereon Mr. Andrews, who seems to have been a very sensible old
+gentleman, tells him all about his curiosities:  and then it comes
+out--if you will believe it--that Master William has been over the
+very same ground as Master Robert, who saw nothing at all.
+
+Whereon Mr. Andrews says, wisely enough, in his solemn old-
+fashioned way, -
+
+"So it is.  One man walks through the world with his eyes open,
+another with his eyes shut; and upon this difference depends all
+the superiority of knowledge which one man acquires over another.
+I have known sailors who had been in all the quarters of the
+world, and could tell you nothing but the signs of the tippling-
+houses, and the price and quality of the liquor.  On the other
+hand, Franklin could not cross the Channel without making
+observations useful to mankind.  While many a vacant thoughtless
+youth is whirled through Europe without gaining a single idea
+worth crossing the street for, the observing eye and inquiring
+mind find matter of improvement and delight in every ramble.  You,
+then, William, continue to use your eyes.  And you, Robert, learn
+that eyes were given to you to use."
+
+So said Mr. Andrews:  and so I say, dear boys--and so says he who
+has the charge of you--to you.  Therefore I beg all good boys
+among you to think over this story, and settle in their own minds
+whether they will be eyes or no eyes; whether they will, as they
+grow up, look and see for themselves what happens:  or whether
+they will let other people look for them, or pretend to look; and
+dupe them, and lead them about--the blind leading the blind, till
+both fall into the ditch.
+
+ I say "good boys;" not merely clever boys, or prudent boys:
+because using your eyes, or not using them, is a question of doing
+Right or doing Wrong.  God has given you eyes; it is your duty to
+God to use them.  If your parents tried to teach you your lessons
+in the most agreeable way, by beautiful picture-books, would it
+not be ungracious, ungrateful, and altogether naughty and wrong,
+to shut your eyes to those pictures, and refuse to learn?  And is
+it not altogether naughty and wrong to refuse to learn from your
+Father in Heaven, the Great God who made all things, when he
+offers to teach you all day long by the most beautiful and most
+wonderful of all picture-books, which is simply all things which
+you can see, hear, and touch, from the sun and stars above your
+head to the mosses and insects at your feet?  It is your duty to
+learn His lessons:  and it is your interest.  God's Book, which is
+the Universe, and the reading of God's Book, which is Science, can
+do you nothing but good, and teach you nothing but truth and
+wisdom.  God did not put this wondrous world about your young
+souls to tempt or to mislead them.  If you ask Him for a fish, he
+will not give you a serpent.  If you ask Him for bread, He will
+not give you a stone.
+
+So use your eyes and your intellect, your senses and your brains,
+and learn what God is trying to teach you continually by them.  I
+do not mean that you must stop there, and learn nothing more.
+Anything but that.  There are things which neither your senses nor
+your brains can tell you; and they are not only more glorious, but
+actually more true and more real than any things which you can see
+or touch.  But you must begin at the beginning in order to end at
+the end, and sow the seed if you wish to gather the fruit.  God
+has ordained that you, and every child which comes into the world,
+should begin by learning something of the world about him by his
+senses and his brain; and the better you learn what they can teach
+you, the more fit you will be to learn what they cannot teach you.
+The more you try now to understand THINGS, the more you will be
+able hereafter to understand men, and That which is above men.
+You began to find out that truly Divine mystery, that you had a
+mother on earth, simply by lying soft and warm upon her bosom; and
+so (as Our Lord told the Jews of old) it is by watching the common
+natural things around you, and considering the lilies of the
+field, how they grow, that you will begin at least to learn that
+far Diviner mystery, that you have a Father in Heaven.  And so you
+will be delivered (if you will) out of the tyranny of darkness,
+and distrust, and fear, into God's free kingdom of light, and
+faith, and love; and will be safe from the venom of that tree
+which is more deadly than the fabled upas of the East.  Who
+planted that tree I know not, it was planted so long ago:  but
+surely it is none of God's planting, neither of the Son of God:
+yet it grows in all lands and in all climes, and sends its hidden
+suckers far and wide, even (unless we be watchful) into your
+hearts and mine.  And its name is the Tree of Unreason, whose
+roots are conceit and ignorance, and its juices folly and death.
+It drops its venom into the finest brains; and makes them call
+sense, nonsense; and nonsense, sense; fact, fiction; and fiction,
+fact.  It drops its venom into the tenderest hearts, alas! and
+makes them call wrong, right; and right, wrong; love, cruelty; and
+cruelty, love.  Some say that the axe is laid to the root of it
+just now, and that it is already tottering to its fall:  while
+others say that it is growing stronger than ever, and ready to
+spread its upas-shade over the whole earth.  For my part, I know
+not, save that all shall be as God wills.  The tree has been cut
+down already again and again; and yet has always thrown out fresh
+shoots and dropped fresh poison from its boughs.  But this at
+least I know:  that any little child, who will use the faculties
+God has given him, may find an antidote to all its poison in the
+meanest herb beneath his feet.
+
+There, you do not understand me, my boys; and the best prayer I
+can offer for you is, perhaps, that you should never need to
+understand me:  but if that sore need should come, and that poison
+should begin to spread its mist over your brains and hearts, then
+you will be proof against it; just in proportion as you have used
+the eyes and the common sense which God has given you, and have
+considered the lilies of the field, how they grow.
+
+C. KINGSLEY.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--THE GLEN
+
+
+
+You find it dull walking up here upon Hartford Bridge Flat this
+sad November day?  Well, I do not deny that the moor looks
+somewhat dreary, though dull it need never be.  Though the fog is
+clinging to the fir-trees, and creeping among the heather, till
+you cannot see as far as Minley Corner, hardly as far as Bramshill
+woods--and all the Berkshire hills are as invisible as if it was a
+dark midnight--yet there is plenty to be seen here at our very
+feet.  Though there is nothing left for you to pick, and all the
+flowers are dead and brown, except here and there a poor half-
+withered scrap of bottle-heath, and nothing left for you to catch
+either, for the butterflies and insects are all dead too, except
+one poor old Daddy-long-legs, who sits upon that piece of turf,
+boring a hole with her tail to lay her eggs in, before the frost
+catches her and ends her like the rest:  though all things, I say,
+seem dead, yet there is plenty of life around you, at your feet, I
+may almost say in the very stones on which you tread.  And though
+the place itself be dreary enough, a sheet of flat heather and a
+little glen in it, with banks of dead fern, and a brown bog
+between them, and a few fir-trees struggling up--yet, if you only
+have eyes to see it, that little bit of glen is beautiful and
+wonderful,--so beautiful and so wonderful and so cunningly
+devised, that it took thousands of years to make it; and it is
+not, I believe, half finished yet.
+
+How do I know all that?  Because a fairy told it me; a fairy who
+lives up here upon the moor, and indeed in most places else, if
+people have but eyes to see her.  What is her name?  I cannot
+tell.  The best name that I can give her (and I think it must be
+something like her real name, because she will always answer if
+you call her by it patiently and reverently) is Madam How.  She
+will come in good time, if she is called, even by a little child.
+And she will let us see her at her work, and, what is more, teach
+us to copy her.  But there is another fairy here likewise, whom we
+can hardly hope to see.  Very thankful should we be if she lifted
+even the smallest corner of her veil, and showed us but for a
+moment if it were but her finger tip--so beautiful is she, and yet
+so awful too.  But that sight, I believe, would not make us proud,
+as if we had had some great privilege.  No, my dear child:  it
+would make us feel smaller, and meaner, and more stupid and more
+ignorant than we had ever felt in our lives before; at the same
+time it would make us wiser than ever we were in our lives before-
+-that one glimpse of the great glory of her whom we call Lady Why.
+
+But I will say more of her presently.  We must talk first with
+Madam How, and perhaps she may help us hereafter to see Lady Why.
+For she is the servant, and Lady Why is the mistress; though she
+has a Master over her again--whose name I leave for you to guess.
+You have heard it often already, and you will hear it again, for
+ever and ever.
+
+But of one thing I must warn you, that you must not confound Madam
+How and Lady Why.  Many people do it, and fall into great mistakes
+thereby,--mistakes that even a little child, if it would think,
+need not commit.  But really great philosophers sometimes make
+this mistake about Why and How; and therefore it is no wonder if
+other people make it too, when they write children's books about
+the wonders of nature, and call them "Why and Because," or "The
+Reason Why."  The books are very good books, and you should read
+and study them:  but they do not tell you really "Why and
+Because," but only "How and So."  They do not tell you the "Reason
+Why" things happen, but only "The Way in which they happen."
+However, I must not blame these good folks, for I have made the
+same mistake myself often, and may do it again:  but all the more
+shame to me.  For see--you know perfectly the difference between
+How and Why, when you are talking about yourself.  If I ask you,
+"Why did we go out to-day?"  You would not answer, "Because we
+opened the door."  That is the answer to "How did we go out?"  The
+answer to Why did we go out is, "Because we chose to take a walk."
+Now when we talk about other things beside ourselves, we must
+remember this same difference between How and Why.  If I ask you,
+"Why does fire burn you?" you would answer, I suppose, being a
+little boy, "Because it is hot;" which is all you know about it.
+But if you were a great chemist, instead of a little boy, you
+would be apt to answer me, I am afraid, "Fire burns because the
+vibratory motion of the molecules of the heated substance
+communicates itself to the molecules of my skin, and so destroys
+their tissue;" which is, I dare say, quite true:  but it only
+tells us how fire burns, the way or means by which it burns; it
+does not tell us the reason why it burns.
+
+But you will ask, "If that is not the reason why fire burns, what
+is?"  My dear child, I do not know.  That is Lady Why's business,
+who is mistress of Mrs. How, and of you and of me; and, as I
+think, of all things that you ever saw, or can see, or even dream.
+And what her reason for making fire burn may be I cannot tell.
+But I believe on excellent grounds that her reason is a very good
+one.  If I dare to guess, I should say that one reason, at least,
+why fire burns, is that you may take care not to play with it, and
+so not only scorch your finger, but set your whole bed on fire,
+and perhaps the house into the bargain, as you might be tempted to
+do if putting your finger in the fire were as pleasant as putting
+sugar in your mouth.
+
+My dear child, if I could once get clearly into your head this
+difference between Why and How, so that you should remember them
+steadily in after life, I should have done you more good than if I
+had given you a thousand pounds.
+
+But now that we know that How and Why are two very different
+matters, and must not be confounded with each other, let us look
+for Madam How, and see her at work making this little glen; for,
+as I told you, it is not half made yet.  One thing we shall see at
+once, and see it more and more clearly the older we grow; I mean
+her wonderful patience and diligence.  Madam How is never idle for
+an instant.  Nothing is too great or too small for her; and she
+keeps her work before her eye in the same moment, and makes every
+separate bit of it help every other bit.  She will keep the sun
+and stars in order, while she looks after poor old Mrs. Daddy-
+long-legs there and her eggs.  She will spend thousands of years
+in building up a mountain, and thousands of years in grinding it
+down again; and then carefully polish every grain of sand which
+falls from that mountain, and put it in its right place, where it
+will be wanted thousands of years hence; and she will take just as
+much trouble about that one grain of sand as she did about the
+whole mountain.  She will settle the exact place where Mrs. Daddy-
+long-legs shall lay her eggs, at the very same time that she is
+settling what shall happen hundreds of years hence in a stair
+millions of miles away.  And I really believe that Madam How knows
+her work so thoroughly, that the grain of sand which sticks now to
+your shoe, and the weight of Mrs. Daddy-long-legs' eggs at the
+bottom of her hole, will have an effect upon suns and stars ages
+after you and I are dead and gone.  Most patient indeed is Madam
+How.  She does not mind the least seeing her own work destroyed;
+she knows that it must be destroyed.  There is a spell upon her,
+and a fate, that everything she makes she must unmake again:  and
+yet, good and wise woman as she is, she never frets, nor tires,
+nor fudges her work, as we say at school.  She takes just as much
+pains to make an acorn as to make a peach.  She takes just as much
+pains about the acorn which the pig eats, as about the acorn which
+will grow into a tall oak, and help to build a great ship.  She
+took just as much pains, again, about the acorn which you crushed
+under your foot just now, and which you fancy will never come to
+anything.  Madam How is wiser than that.  She knows that it will
+come to something.  She will find some use for it, as she finds a
+use for everything.  That acorn which you crushed will turn into
+mould, and that mould will go to feed the roots of some plant,
+perhaps next year, if it lies where it is; or perhaps it will be
+washed into the brook, and then into the river, and go down to the
+sea, and will feed the roots of some plant in some new continent
+ages and ages hence:  and so Madam How will have her own again.
+You dropped your stick into the river yesterday, and it floated
+away.  You were sorry, because it had cost you a great deal of
+trouble to cut it, and peel it, and carve a head and your name on
+it.  Madam How was not sorry, though she had taken a great deal
+more trouble with that stick than ever you had taken.  She had
+been three years making that stick, out of many things, sunbeams
+among the rest.  But when it fell into the river, Madam How knew
+that she should not lose her sunbeams nor anything else:  the
+stick would float down the river, and on into the sea; and there,
+when it got heavy with the salt water, it would sink, and lodge,
+and be buried, and perhaps ages hence turn into coal; and ages
+after that some one would dig it up and burn it, and then out
+would come, as bright warm flame, all the sunbeams that were
+stored away in that stick:  and so Madam How would have her own
+again.  And if that should not be the fate of your stick, still
+something else will happen to it just as useful in the long run;
+for Madam How never loses anything, but uses up all her scraps and
+odds and ends somehow, somewhere, somewhen, as is fit and proper
+for the Housekeeper of the whole Universe.  Indeed, Madam How is
+so patient that some people fancy her stupid, and think that,
+because she does not fall into a passion every time you steal her
+sweets, or break her crockery, or disarrange her furniture,
+therefore she does not care.  But I advise you as a little boy,
+and still more when you grow up to be a man, not to get that fancy
+into your head; for you will find that, however good-natured and
+patient Madam How is in most matters, her keeping silence and not
+seeming to see you is no sign that she has forgotten.  On the
+contrary, she bears a grudge (if one may so say, with all respect
+to her) longer than any one else does; because she will always
+have her own again.  Indeed, I sometimes think that if it were not
+for Lady Why, her mistress, she might bear some of her grudges for
+ever and ever.  I have seen men ere now damage some of Madam How's
+property when they were little boys, and be punished by her all
+their lives long, even though she had mended the broken pieces, or
+turned them to some other use.  Therefore I say to you, beware of
+Madam How.  She will teach you more kindly, patiently, and
+tenderly than any mother, if you want to learn her trade.  But if,
+instead of learning her trade, you damage her materials and play
+with her tools, beware lest she has her own again out of you.
+
+Some people think, again, that Madam How is not only stupid, but
+ill-tempered and cruel; that she makes earthquakes and storms, and
+famine and pestilences, in a sort of blind passion, not caring
+where they go or whom they hurt; quite heedless of who is in the
+way, if she wants to do anything or go anywhere.  Now, that Madam
+How can be very terrible there can be no doubt:  but there is no
+doubt also that, if people choose to learn, she will teach them to
+get out of her way whenever she has business to do which is
+dangerous to them.  But as for her being cruel and unjust, those
+may believe it who like.  You, my dear boys and girls, need not
+believe it, if you will only trust to Lady Why; and be sure that
+Why is the mistress and How the servant, now and for ever.  That
+Lady Why is utterly good and kind I know full well; and I believe
+that, in her case too, the old proverb holds, "Like mistress, like
+servant;" and that the more we know of Madam How, the more we
+shall be content with her, and ready to submit to whatever she
+does:  but not with that stupid resignation which some folks
+preach who do not believe in lady Why--that is no resignation at
+all.  That is merely saying -
+
+
+"What can't be cured
+Must be endured,"
+
+
+like a donkey when he turns his tail to a hail-storm,--but the
+true resignation, the resignation which is fit for grown people
+and children alike, the resignation which is the beginning and the
+end of all wisdom and all religion, is to believe that Lady Why
+knows best, because she herself is perfectly good; and that as she
+is mistress over Madam How, so she has a Master over her, whose
+name--I say again--I leave you to guess.
+
+So now that I have taught you not to be afraid of Madam How, we
+will go and watch her at her work; and if we do not understand
+anything we see, we will ask her questions.  She will always show
+us one of her lesson books if we give her time.  And if we have to
+wait some time for her answer, you need not fear catching cold,
+though it is November; for she keeps her lesson books scattered
+about in strange places, and we may have to walk up and down that
+hill more than once before we can make out how she makes the glen.
+
+Well--how was the glen made?  You shall guess it if you like, and
+I will guess too.  You think, perhaps, that an earthquake opened
+it?
+
+My dear child, we must look before we guess.  Then, after we have
+looked a little, and got some grounds for guessing, then we may
+guess.  And you have no ground for supposing there ever was an
+earthquake here strong enough to open that glen.  There may have
+been one:  but we must guess from what we do know, and not from
+what we do not.
+
+Guess again.  Perhaps it was there always, from the beginning of
+the world?  My dear child, you have no proof of that either.
+Everything round you is changing in shape daily and hourly, as you
+will find out the longer you live; and therefore it is most
+reasonable to suppose that this glen has changed its shape, as
+everything else on earth has done.  Besides, I told you not that
+Madam How had made the glen, but that she was making it, and as
+yet has only half finished.  That is my first guess; and my next
+guess is that water is making the glen--water, and nothing else.
+
+You open your young eyes.  And I do not blame you.  I looked at
+this very glen for fifteen years before I made that guess; and I
+have looked at it some ten years since, to make sure that my guess
+held good.  For man after all is very blind, my dear boy, and very
+stupid, and cannot see what lies under his own feet all day long;
+and if Lady Why, and He whom Lady Why obeys, were not very patient
+and gentle with mankind, they would have perished off the face of
+the earth long ago, simply from their own stupidity.  I, at least,
+was very stupid in this case, for I had my head full of
+earthquakes, and convulsions of nature, and all sorts of prodigies
+which never happened to this glen; and so, while I was trying to
+find what was not there, I of course found nothing.  But when I
+put them all out of my head, and began to look for what was there,
+I found it at once; and lo and behold! I had seen it a thousand
+times before, and yet never learnt anything from it, like a stupid
+man as I was; though what I learnt you may learn as easily as I
+did.
+
+And what did I find?
+
+The pond at the bottom of the glen.
+
+You know that pond, of course?  You don't need to go there?  Very
+well.  Then if you do, do not you know also that the pond is
+always filling up with sand and mud; and that though we clean it
+out every three or four years, it always fills again?  Now where
+does that sand and mud come from?
+
+Down that stream, of course, which runs out of this bog.  You see
+it coming down every time there is a flood, and the stream fouls.
+
+Very well.  Then, said Madam How to me, as soon as I recollected
+that, "Don't you see, you stupid man, that the stream has made the
+glen, and the earth which runs down the stream was all once part
+of the hill on which you stand."  I confess I was very much
+ashamed of myself when she said that.  For that is the history of
+the whole mystery.  Madam How is digging away with her soft spade,
+water.  She has a harder spade, or rather plough, the strongest
+and most terrible of all ploughs; but that, I am glad to say, she
+has laid by in England here.
+
+Water?  But water is too simple a thing to have dug out all this
+great glen.
+
+My dear child, the most wonderful part of Madam How's work is,
+that she does such great things and so many different things, with
+one and the same tool, which looks to you so simple, though it
+really is not so.  Water, for instance, is not a simple thing, but
+most complicated; and we might spend hours in talking about water,
+without having come to the end of its wonders.  Still Madam How is
+a great economist, and never wastes her materials.  She is like
+the sailor who boasted (only she never boasts) that, if he had but
+a long life and a strong knife, he would build St. Paul's
+Cathedral before he was done.  And Madam How has a very long life,
+and plenty of time; and one of the strongest of all her tools is
+water.  Now if you will stoop down and look into the heather, I
+will show you how she is digging out the glen with this very mist
+which is hanging about our feet.  At least, so I guess.
+
+For see how the mist clings to the points of the heather leaves,
+and makes drops.  If the hot sun came out the drops would dry, and
+they would vanish into the air in light warm steam.  But now that
+it is dark and cold they drip, or run down the heather-stems, to
+the ground.  And whither do they go then?  Whither will the water
+go,--hundreds of gallons of it perhaps,--which has dripped and run
+through the heather in this single day?  It will sink into the
+ground, you know.  And then what will become of it?  Madam How
+will use it as an underground spade, just as she uses the rain (at
+least, when it rains too hard, and therefore the rain runs off the
+moor instead of sinking into it) as a spade above ground.
+
+Now come to the edge of the glen, and I will show you the mist
+that fell yesterday, perhaps, coming out of the ground again, and
+hard at work.
+
+You know of what an odd, and indeed of what a pretty form all
+these glens are.  How the flat moor ends suddenly in a steep
+rounded bank, almost like the crest of a wave--ready like a wave-
+crest to fall over, and as you know, falling over sometimes, bit
+by bit, where the soil is bare.
+
+Oh, yes; you are very fond of those banks.  It is "awfully jolly,"
+as you say, scrambling up and down them, in the deep heath and
+fern; besides, there are plenty of rabbit-holes there, because
+they are all sand; while there are no rabbit-holes on the flat
+above, because it is all gravel.
+
+Yes; you know all about it:  but you know, too, that you must not
+go too far down these banks, much less roll down them, because
+there is almost certain to be a bog at the bottom, lying upon a
+gentle slope; and there you get wet through.
+
+All round these hills, from here to Aldershot in one direction,
+and from here to Windsor in another, you see the same shaped
+glens; the wave-crest along their top, and at the foot of the
+crest a line of springs which run out over the slopes, or well up
+through them in deep sand-galls, as you call them--shaking
+quagmires which are sometimes deep enough to swallow up a horse,
+and which you love to dance upon in summer time.  Now the water of
+all these springs is nothing but the rain, and mist, and dew,
+which has sunk down first through the peaty soil, and then through
+the gravel and sand, and there has stopped.  And why?  Because
+under the gravel (about which I will tell you a strange story one
+day) and under the sand, which is what the geologists call the
+Upper Bagshot sand, there is an entirely different set of beds,
+which geologists call the Bracklesham beds, from a place near the
+New Forest; and in those beds there is a vein of clay, and through
+that clay the water cannot get, as you have seen yourself when we
+dug it out in the field below to puddle the pond-head; and very
+good fun you thought it, and a very pretty mess you made of
+yourself.  Well:  because the water cannot get though this clay,
+and must go somewhere, it runs out continually along the top of
+the clay, and as it runs undermines the bank, and brings down sand
+and gravel continually for the next shower to wash into the stream
+below.
+
+Now think for one moment how wonderful it is that the shape of
+these glens, of which you are so fond, was settled by the
+particular order in which Madam How laid down the gravel and sand
+and mud at the bottom of the sea, ages and ages ago.  This is what
+I told you, that the least thing that Madam How does to-day may
+take effect hundreds and thousands of years hence.
+
+But I must tell you I think there was a time when this glen was of
+a very different shape from what it is now; and I dare say,
+according to your notions, of a much prettier shape.  It was once
+just like one of those Chines which we used to see at Bournemouth.
+You recollect them?  How there was a narrow gap in the cliff of
+striped sands and gravels; and out of the mouth of that gap, only
+a few feet across, there poured down a great slope of mud and sand
+the shape of half a bun, some wet and some dry, up which we used
+to scramble and get into the Chine, and call the Chine what it was
+in the truest sense, Fairyland.  You recollect how it was all
+eaten out into mountain ranges, pinnacles, steep cliffs of white,
+and yellow, and pink, standing up against the clear blue sky; till
+we agreed that, putting aside the difference of size, they were as
+beautiful and grand as any Alps we had ever seen in pictures.  And
+how we saw (for there could be no mistake about it there) that the
+Chine was being hollowed out by the springs which broke out high
+up the cliff, and by the rain which wore the sand into furrowed
+pinnacles and peaks.  You recollect the beautiful place, and how,
+when we looked back down it we saw between the miniature mountain
+walls the bright blue sea, and heard it murmur on the sands
+outside.  So I verily believe we might have done, if we had stood
+somewhere at the bottom of this glen thousands of years ago.  We
+should have seen the sea in front of us; or rather, an arm of the
+sea; for Finchampstead ridges opposite, instead of being covered
+with farms, and woodlands, and purple heath above, would have been
+steep cliffs of sand and clay, just like those you see at
+Bournemouth now; and--what would have spoilt somewhat the beauty
+of the sight--along the shores there would have floated, at least
+in winter, great blocks and floes of ice, such as you might have
+seen in the tideway at King's Lynn the winter before last,
+growling and crashing, grubbing and ploughing the sand, and the
+gravel, and the mud, and sweeping them away into seas towards the
+North, which are now all fruitful land.  That may seem to you like
+a dream:  yet it is true; and some day, when we have another talk
+with Madam How, I will show even a child like you that it was
+true.
+
+But what could change a beautiful Chine like that at Bournemouth
+into a wide sloping glen like this of Bracknell's Bottom, with a
+wood like Coombs', many acres large, in the middle of it?  Well
+now, think.  It is a capital plan for finding out Madam How's
+secrets, to see what she might do in one place, and explain by it
+what she has done in another.  Suppose now, Madam How had orders
+to lift up the whole coast of Bournemouth only twenty or even ten
+feet higher out of the sea than it is now.  She could do that
+easily enough, for she has been doing so on the coast of South
+America for ages; she has been doing so this very summer in what
+hasty people would call a hasty, and violent, and ruthless way;
+though I shall not say so, for I believe that Lady Why knows best.
+She is doing so now steadily on the west coast of Norway, which is
+rising quietly--all that vast range of mountain wall and iron-
+bound cliff--at the rate of some four feet in a hundred years,
+without making the least noise or confusion, or even causing an
+extra ripple on the sea; so light and gentle, when she will, can
+Madam How's strong finger be.
+
+Now, if the mouth of that Chine at Bournemouth was lifted twenty
+feet out of the sea, one thing would happen,--that the high tide
+would not come up any longer, and wash away the cake of dirt at
+the entrance, as we saw it do so often.  But if the mud stopped
+there, the mud behind it would come down more slowly, and lodge
+inside more and more, till the Chine was half filled-up, and only
+the upper part of the cliffs continue to be eaten away, above the
+level where the springs ran out.  So gradually the Chine, instead
+of being deep and narrow, would become broad and shallow; and
+instead of hollowing itself rapidly after every shower of rain, as
+you saw the Chine at Bournemouth doing, would hollow itself out
+slowly, as this glen is doing now.  And one thing more would
+happen,--when the sea ceased to gnaw at the foot of the cliffs
+outside, and to carry away every stone and grain of sand which
+fell from them, the cliffs would very soon cease to be cliffs; the
+rain and the frost would still crumble them down, but the dirt
+that fell would lie at their feet, and gradually make a slope of
+dry land, far out where the shallow sea had been; and their tops,
+instead of being steep as now, would become smooth and rounded;
+and so at last, instead of two sharp walls of cliff at the Chine's
+mouth, you might have --just what you have here at the mouth of
+this glen,--our Mount and the Warren Hill,--long slopes with
+sheets of drifted gravel and sand at their feet, stretching down
+into what was once an icy sea, and is now the Vale of Blackwater.
+And this I really believe Madam How has done simply by lifting
+Hartford Bridge Flat a few more feet out of the sea, and leaving
+the rest to her trusty tool, the water in the sky.
+
+That is my guess:  and I think it is a good guess, because I have
+asked Madam How a hundred different questions about it in the last
+ten years, and she always answered them in the same way, saying,
+"Water, water, you stupid man."  But I do not want you merely to
+depend on what I say.  If you want to understand Madam How, you
+must ask her questions yourself, and make up your mind yourself
+like a man, instead of taking things at hearsay or second-hand,
+like the vulgar.  Mind, by "the vulgar" I do not mean poor people:
+I mean ignorant and uneducated people, who do not use their brains
+rightly, though they may be fine ladies, kings, or popes.  The
+Bible says, "Prove all things:  hold fast that which is good."  So
+do you prove my guess, and if it proves good, hold it fast.
+
+And how can I do that?
+
+First, by direct experiment, as it is called.  In plain English--
+go home and make a little Hartford Bridge Flat in the stable-yard;
+and then ask Mrs. How if she will not make a glen in it like this
+glen here.  We will go home and try that.  We will make a great
+flat cake of clay, and put upon it a cap of sand; and then we will
+rain upon it out of a watering-pot; and see if Mrs. How does not
+begin soon to make a glen in the side of the heap, just like those
+on Hartford Bridge Flat.  I believe she will; and certainly, if
+she does, it will be a fresh proof that my guess is right.  And
+then we will see whether water will not make glens of a different
+shape than these, if it run over soils of a different kind.  We
+will make a Hartford Bridge Flat turned upside down--a cake of
+sand with a cap of clay on the top; and we will rain on that out
+of our watering-pot, and see what sort of glens we make then.  I
+can guess what they will be like, because I have seen them--steep
+overhanging cliffs, with very narrow gullies down them:  but you
+shall try for yourself, and make up your mind whether you think me
+right or wrong.  Meanwhile, remember that those gullies too will
+have been made by water.
+
+And there is another way of "verifying my theory," as it is
+called; in plain English, seeing if my guess holds good; that is,
+to look at other valleys--not merely the valleys round here, but
+valleys in clay, in chalk, in limestone, in the hard slate rock
+such as you saw in Devonshire--and see whether my guess does not
+hold good about them too; whether all of them, deep or shallow,
+broad or narrow, rock or earth, may not have been all hollowed out
+by running water.  I am sure if you would do this you would find
+something to amuse you, and something to instruct you, whenever
+you wish.  I know that I do.  To me the longest railroad journey,
+instead of being stupid, is like continually turning over the
+leaves of a wonderful book, or looking at wonderful pictures of
+old worlds which were made and unmade thousands of years ago.  For
+I keep looking, not only at the railway cuttings, where the bones
+of the old worlds are laid bare, but at the surface of the ground;
+at the plains and downs, banks and knolls, hills and mountains;
+and continually asking Mrs. How what gave them each its shape:
+and I will soon teach you to do the same.  When you do, I tell you
+fairly her answer will be in almost every case, "Running water."
+Either water running when soft, as it usually is; or water running
+when it is hard--in plain words, moving ice.
+
+About that moving ice, which is Mrs. How's stronger spade, I will
+tell you some other time; and show you, too, the marks of it in
+every gravel pit about here.  But now, I see, you want to ask a
+question; and what is it?
+
+Do I mean to say that water has made great valleys, such as you
+have seen paintings and photographs of,--valleys thousands of feet
+deep, among mountains thousands of feet high?
+
+Yes, I do.  But, as I said before, I do not like you to take my
+word upon trust.  When you are older you shall go to the
+mountains, and you shall judge for yourself.  Still, I must say
+that I never saw a valley, however deep, or a cliff, however high,
+which had not been scooped out by water; and that even the
+mountain-tops which stand up miles aloft in jagged peaks and
+pinnacles against the sky were cut out at first, and are being cut
+and sharpened still, by little else save water, soft and hard;
+that is, by rain, frost, and ice.
+
+Water, and nothing else, has sawn out such a chasm as that through
+which the ships run up to Bristol, between Leigh Wood and St.
+Vincent's Rocks.  Water, and nothing else, has shaped those peaks
+of the Matterhorn, or the Weisshorn, or the Pic du Midi of the
+Pyrenees, of which you have seen sketches and photographs.  Just
+so water might saw out Hartford Bridge Flat, if it had time
+enough, into a labyrinth of valleys, and hills, and peaks standing
+alone; as it has done already by Ambarrow, and Edgbarrow, and the
+Folly Hill on the other side of the vale.
+
+I see you are astonished at the notion that water can make Alps.
+But it was just because I knew you would be astonished at Madam
+How's doing so great a thing with so simple a tool, that I began
+by showing you how she was doing the same thing in a small way
+here upon these flats.  For the safest way to learn Madam How's
+methods is to watch her at work in little corners at commonplace
+business, which will not astonish or frighten us, nor put huge
+hasty guesses and dreams into our heads.  Sir Isaac Newton, some
+will tell you, found out the great law of gravitation, which holds
+true of all the suns and stars in heaven, by watching an apple
+fall:  and even if he did not find it out so, he found it out, we
+know, by careful thinking over the plain and commonplace fact,
+that things have weight.  So do you be humble and patient, and
+watch Madam How at work on little things.  For that is the way to
+see her at work upon all space and time.
+
+What? you have a question more to ask?
+
+Oh!  I talked about Madam How lifting up Hartford Bridge Flat.
+How could she do that?  My dear child, that is a long story, and I
+must tell it you some other time.  Meanwhile, did you ever see the
+lid of a kettle rise up and shake when the water inside boiled?
+Of course; and of course, too, remember that Madam How must have
+done it.  Then think over between this and our next talk, what
+that can possibly have to do with her lifting up Hartford Bridge
+Flat.  But you have been longing, perhaps, all this time to hear
+more about Lady Why, and why she set Madam How to make Bracknell's
+Bottom.
+
+My dear child, the only answer I dare give to that is:  Whatever
+other purposes she may have made it for, she made it at least for
+this--that you and I should come to it this day, and look at, and
+talk over it, and become thereby wiser and more earnest, and we
+will hope more humble and better people.  Whatever else Lady Why
+may wish or not wish, this she wishes always, to make all men wise
+and all men good.  For what is written of her whom, as in a
+parable, I have called Lady Why?
+
+"The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His
+works of old.
+
+"I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the
+earth was.
+
+"When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were
+no fountains abounding with water.
+
+"Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought
+forth:
+
+"While as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the
+highest part of the dust of the world.
+
+"When He prepared the heavens, I was there:  when He set a compass
+upon the face of the depth:
+
+"When He established the clouds above:  when He strengthened the
+fountains of the deep:
+
+"When He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters should not
+pass His commandment:  when He appointed the foundations of the
+earth:
+
+"Then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him:  and I was daily
+His delight, rejoicing always before Him:
+
+"Rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth; and my delights
+were with the sons of men.
+
+"Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children:  for blessed are
+they that keep my ways."
+
+That we can say, for it has been said for us already.  But beyond
+that we can say, and need say, very little.  We were not there, as
+we read in the Book of Job, when God laid the foundations of the
+earth.  "We see," says St. Paul, "as in a glass darkly, and only
+know in part."  "For who," he asks again, "has known the mind of
+the Lord, or who hath been His counsellor? . . . For of Him, and
+through Him, and to Him, are all things:  to whom be glory for
+ever and ever.  Amen."  Therefore we must not rashly say, this or
+that is Why a thing has happened; nor invent what are called
+"final causes," which are not Lady Why herself, but only our
+little notions of what Lady Why has done, or rather what we should
+have done if we had been in her place.  It is not, indeed, by
+thinking that we shall find out anything about Lady Why.  She
+speaks not to our eyes or to our brains, like Madam How, but to
+that inner part of us which we call our hearts and spirits, and
+which will endure when eyes and brain are turned again to dust.
+If your heart be pure and sober, gentle and truthful, then Lady
+Why speaks to you without words, and tells you things which Madam
+How and all her pupils, the men of science, can never tell.  When
+you lie, it may be, on a painful sick-bed, but with your mother's
+hand in yours; when you sit by her, looking up into her loving
+eyes; when you gaze out towards the setting sun, and fancy golden
+capes and islands in the clouds, and seas and lakes in the blue
+sky, and the infinite rest and peace of the far west sends rest
+and peace into your young heart, till you sit silent and happy,
+you know not why; when sweet music fills your heart with noble and
+tender instincts which need no thoughts or words; ay, even when
+you watch the raging thunderstorm, and feel it to be, in spite of
+its great awfulness, so beautiful that you cannot turn your eyes
+away:  at such times as these Lady Why is speaking to your soul of
+souls, and saying, "My child, this world is a new place, and
+strange, and often terrible:  but be not afraid.  All will come
+right at last.  Rest will conquer Restlessness; Faith will conquer
+Fear; Order will conquer Disorder; Health will conquer Sickness;
+Joy will conquer Sorrow; Pleasure will conquer Pain; Life will
+conquer Death; Right will conquer Wrong.  All will be well at
+last.  Keep your soul and body pure, humble, busy, pious--in one
+word, be good:  and ere you die, or after you die, you may have
+some glimpse of Me, the Everlasting Why:  and hear with the ears,
+not of your body but of your spirit, men and all rational beings,
+plants and animals, ay, the very stones beneath your feet, the
+clouds above your head, the planets and the suns away in farthest
+space, singing eternally,
+
+"'Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power,
+for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are
+and were created."'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--EARTHQUAKES
+
+
+
+So?  You have been looking at that beautiful drawing of the ruin
+of Arica in the Illustrated London News:  and it has puzzled you
+and made you sad.  You want to know why God killed all those
+people--mothers among them, too, and little children?
+
+Alas, my dear child! who am I that I should answer you that?
+
+Have you done wrong in asking me?  No, my dear child; no.  You
+have asked me because you are a human being and a child of God,
+and not merely a cleverer sort of animal, an ape who can read and
+write and cast accounts.  Therefore it is that you cannot be
+content, and ought not to be content, with asking how things
+happen, but must go on to ask why.  You cannot be content with
+knowing the causes of things; and if you knew all the natural
+science that ever was or ever will be known to men, that would not
+satisfy you; for it would only tell you the CAUSES of things,
+while your souls want to know the REASONS of things besides; and
+though I may not be able to tell you the reasons of things, or
+show you aught but a tiny glimpse here and there of that which I
+called the other day the glory of Lady Why, yet I believe that
+somehow, somewhen, somewhere, you will learn something of the
+reason of things.  For that thirst to know WHY was put into the
+hearts of little children by God Himself; and I believe that God
+would never have given them that thirst if He had not meant to
+satisfy it.
+
+There--you do not understand me.  I trust that you will understand
+me some day.  Meanwhile, I think--I only say I THINK--you know I
+told you how humble we must be whenever we speak of Lady Why--that
+we may guess at something like a good reason for the terrible
+earthquakes in South America.  I do not wish to be hard upon poor
+people in great affliction:  but I cannot help thinking that they
+have been doing for hundreds of years past something very like
+what the Bible calls "tempting God"--staking their property and
+their lives upon the chances of no earthquakes coming, while they
+ought to have known that an earthquake might come any day.  They
+have fulfilled (and little thought I that it would be fulfilled so
+soon) the parable that I told you once, of the nation of the Do-
+as-you-likes, who lived careless and happy at the foot of the
+burning mountain, and would not be warned by the smoke that came
+out of the top, or by the slag and cinders which lay all about
+them; till the mountain blew up, and destroyed them miserably.
+
+Then I think that they ought to have expected an earthquake.
+
+Well--it is not for us to judge any one, especially if they live
+in a part of the world in which we have not been ourselves.  But I
+think that we know, and that they ought to have known, enough
+about earthquakes to have been more prudent than they have been
+for many a year.  At least we will hope that, though they would
+not learn their lesson till this year, they will learn it now, and
+will listen to the message which I think Madam How has brought
+them, spoken in a voice of thunder, and written in letters of
+flame.
+
+And what is that?
+
+My dear child, if the landlord of our house was in the habit of
+pulling the roof down upon our heads, and putting gunpowder under
+the foundations to blow us up, do you not think we should know
+what he meant, even though he never spoke a word?  He would be
+very wrong in behaving so, of course:  but one thing would be
+certain,--that he did not intend us to live in his house any
+longer if he could help it; and was giving us, in a very rough
+fashion, notice to quit.  And so it seems to me that these poor
+Spanish Americans have received from the Landlord of all
+landlords, who can do no wrong, such a notice to quit as perhaps
+no people ever had before; which says to them in unmistakable
+words, "You must leave this country:  or perish."  And I believe
+that that message, like all Lady Why's messages, is at heart a
+merciful and loving one; that if these Spaniards would leave the
+western coast of Peru, and cross the Andes into the green forests
+of the eastern side of their own land, they might not only live
+free from earthquakes, but (if they would only be good and
+industrious) become a great, rich, and happy nation, instead of
+the idle, and useless, and I am afraid not over good, people which
+they have been.  For in that eastern part of their own land God's
+gifts are waiting for them, in a paradise such as I can neither
+describe nor you conceive;--precious woods, fruits, drugs, and
+what not--boundless wealth, in one word--waiting for them to send
+it all down the waters of the mighty river Amazon, enriching us
+here in the Old World, and enriching themselves there in the New.
+If they would only go and use these gifts of God, instead of
+neglecting them as they have been doing for now three hundred
+years, they would be a blessing to the earth, instead of being--
+that which they have been.
+
+God grant, my dear child, that these poor people may take the
+warning that has been sent to them; "The voice of God revealed in
+facts," as the great Lord Bacon would have called it, and see not
+only that God has bidden them leave the place where they are now,
+but has prepared for them, in their own land, a home a thousand
+times better than that in which they now live.
+
+But you ask, How ought they to have known that an earthquake would
+come?
+
+Well, to make you understand that, we must talk a little about
+earthquakes, and what makes them; and in order to find out that,
+let us try the very simplest cause of which we can think.  That is
+the wise and scientific plan.
+
+Now, whatever makes these earthquakes must be enormously strong;
+that is certain.  And what is the strongest thing you know of in
+the world?  Think . . .
+
+Gunpowder?
+
+Well, gunpowder is strong sometimes:  but not always.  You may
+carry it in a flask, or in your hand, and then it is weak enough.
+It only becomes strong by being turned into gas and steam.  But
+steam is always strong.  And if you look at a railway engine,
+still more if you had ever seen--which God forbid you should--a
+boiler explosion, you would agree with me, that the strongest
+thing we know of in the world is steam.
+
+Now I think that we can explain almost, if not quite, all that we
+know about earthquakes, if we believe that on the whole they are
+caused by steam and other gases expanding, that is, spreading out,
+with wonderful quickness and strength.  Of course there must be
+something to make them expand, and that is HEAT.  But we will not
+talk of that yet.
+
+Now do you remember that riddle which I put to you the other day?-
+-"What had the rattling of the lid of the kettle to do with
+Hartford Bridge Flat being lifted out of the ancient sea?"
+
+The answer to the riddle, I believe, is--Steam has done both.  The
+lid of the kettle rattles, because the expanding steam escapes in
+little jets, and so causes a LID-QUAKE.  Now suppose that there
+was steam under the earth trying to escape, and the earth in one
+place was loose and yet hard, as the lid of the kettle is loose
+and yet hard, with cracks in it, it may be, like the crack between
+the edge of the lid and the edge of the kettle itself:  might not
+the steam try to escape through the cracks, and rattle the surface
+of the earth, and so cause an EARTHQUAKE?
+
+So the steam would escape generally easily, and would only make a
+passing rattle, like the earthquake of which the famous jester
+Charles Selwyn said that it was quite a young one, so tame that
+you might have stroked it; like that which I myself once felt in
+the Pyrenees, which gave me very solemn thoughts after a while,
+though at first I did nothing but laugh at it; and I will tell you
+why.
+
+I was travelling in the Pyrenees; and I came one evening to the
+loveliest spot--a glen, or rather a vast crack in the mountains,
+so narrow that there was no room for anything at the bottom of it,
+save a torrent roaring between walls of polished rock.  High above
+the torrent the road was cut out among the cliffs, and above the
+road rose more cliffs, with great black cavern mouths, hundreds of
+feet above our heads, out of each of which poured in foaming
+waterfalls streams large enough to turn a mill, and above them
+mountains piled on mountains, all covered with woods of box, which
+smelt rich and hot and musky in the warm spring air.  Among the
+box-trees and fallen boulders grew hepaticas, blue and white and
+red, such as you see in the garden; and little stars of gentian,
+more azure than the azure sky.  But out of the box-woods above
+rose giant silver firs, clothing the cliffs and glens with tall
+black spires, till they stood out at last in a jagged saw-edge
+against the purple evening sky, along the mountain ranges,
+thousands of feet aloft; and beyond them again, at the head of the
+valley, rose vast cones of virgin snow, miles away in reality, but
+looking so brilliant and so near that one fancied at the first
+moment that one could have touched them with one's hand.  Snow-
+white they stood, the glorious things, seven thousand feet into
+the air; and I watched their beautiful white sides turn rose-
+colour in the evening sun, and when he set, fade into dull cold
+gray, till the bright moon came out to light them up once more.
+When I was tired of wondering and admiring, I went into bed; and
+there I had a dream--such a dream as Alice had when she went into
+Wonderland--such a dream as I dare say you may have had ere now.
+Some noise or stir puts into your fancy as you sleep a whole long
+dream to account for it; and yet that dream, which seems to you to
+be hours long, has not taken up a second of time; for the very
+same noise which begins the dream, wakes you at the end of it:
+and so it was with me.  I dreamed that some English people had
+come into the hotel where I was, and were sleeping in the room
+underneath me; and that they had quarrelled and fought, and broke
+their bed down with a tremendous crash, and that I must get up,
+and stop the fight; and at that moment I woke and heard coming up
+the valley from the north such a roar as I never heard before or
+since; as if a hundred railway trains were rolling underground;
+and just as it passed under my bed there was a tremendous thump,
+and I jumped out of bed quicker than I ever did in my life, and
+heard the roaring sound die away as it rolled up the valley
+towards the peaks of snow.  Still I had in my head this notion of
+the Englishmen fighting in the room below.  But then I recollected
+that no Englishmen had come in the night before, and that I had
+been in the room below, and that there was no bed in it.  Then I
+opened my window--a woman screamed, a dog barked, some cocks and
+hens cackled in a very disturbed humour, and then I could hear
+nothing but the roaring of the torrent a hundred feet below.  And
+then it flashed across me what all the noise was about; and I
+burst out laughing and said "It is only an earthquake," and went
+to bed
+
+Next morning I inquired whether any one had heard a noise.  No,
+nobody had heard anything.  And the driver who had brought me up
+the valley only winked, but did not choose to speak.  At last at
+breakfast I asked the pretty little maid who waited what was the
+meaning of the noise I heard in the night, and she answered, to my
+intense amusement, "Ah! bah! ce n'etait qu'un tremblement de
+terre; il y en a ici toutes les six semaines."  Now the secret was
+out.  The little maid, I found, came from the lowland far away,
+and did not mind telling the truth:  but the good people of the
+place were afraid to let out that they had earthquakes every six
+weeks, for fear of frightening visitors away:  and because they
+were really very good people, and very kind to me, I shall not
+tell you what the name of the place is.
+
+Of course after that I could do no less than ask Madam How, very
+civilly, how she made earthquakes in that particular place,
+hundreds of miles away from any burning mountain?  And this was
+the answer I THOUGHT she gave, though I am not so conceited as to
+say I am sure.
+
+As I had come up the valley I had seen that the cliffs were all
+beautiful gray limestone marble; but just at this place they were
+replaced by granite, such as you may see in London Bridge or at
+Aberdeen.  I do not mean that the limestone changed to granite,
+but that the granite had risen up out of the bottom of the valley,
+and had carried the limestone (I suppose) up on its back hundreds
+of feet into the air.  Those caves with the waterfalls pouring
+from their mouths were all on one level, at the top of the
+granite, and the bottom of the limestone.  That was to be
+expected; for, as I will explain to you some day, water can make
+caves easily in limestone:  but never, I think, in granite.  But I
+knew that besides these cold springs which came out of the caves,
+there were hot springs also, full of curious chemical salts, just
+below the very house where I was in.  And when I went to look at
+them, I found that they came out of the rock just where the
+limestone and the granite joined.  "Ah," I said, "now I think I
+have Madam How's answer.  The lid of one of her great steam
+boilers is rather shaky and cracked just here, because the granite
+has broken and torn the limestone as it lifted it up; and here is
+the hot water out of the boiler actually oozing out of the crack;
+and the earthquake I heard last night was simply the steam
+rumbling and thumping inside, and trying to get out."
+
+And then, my dear child, I fell into a more serious mood.  I said
+to myself, "If that stream had been a little, only a little
+stronger, or if the rock above it had been only a little weaker,
+it would have been no laughing matter then; the village might have
+been shaken to the ground; the rocks hurled into the torrent; jets
+of steam and of hot water, mixed, it may be, with deadly gases,
+have roared out of the riven ground; that might have happened
+here, in short, which has happened and happens still in a hundred
+places in the world, whenever the rocks are too weak to stand the
+pressure of the steam below, and the solid earth bursts as an
+engine boiler bursts when the steam within it is too strong."  And
+when those thoughts came into my mind, I was in no humour to jest
+any more about "young earthquakes," or "Madam How's boilers;" but
+rather to say with the wise man of old, "It is of the Lord's
+mercies that we are not consumed."
+
+Most strange, most terrible also, are the tricks which this
+underground steam plays.  It will make the ground, which seems to
+us so hard and firm, roll and rock in waves, till people are sea-
+sick, as on board a ship; and that rocking motion (which is the
+most common) will often, when it is but slight, set the bells
+ringing in the steeples, or make the furniture, and things on
+shelves, jump about quaintly enough.  It will make trees bend to
+and fro, as if a wind was blowing through them; open doors
+suddenly, and shut them again with a slam; make the timbers of the
+floors and roofs creak, as they do in a ship at sea; or give men
+such frights as one of the dock-keepers at Liverpool got in the
+earthquake in 1863, when his watchbox rocked so, that he thought
+some one was going to pitch him over into the dock.  But these are
+only little hints and warnings of what it can do.  When it is
+strong enough, it will rock down houses and churches into heaps of
+ruins, or, if it leaves them standing, crack them from top to
+bottom, so that they must be pulled down and rebuilt.
+
+You saw those pictures of the ruins of Arica, about which our talk
+began; and from them you can guess well enough for yourself what a
+town looks like which has been ruined by an earthquake.  Of the
+misery and the horror which follow such a ruin I will not talk to
+you, nor darken your young spirit with sad thoughts which grown
+people must face, and ought to face.  But the strangeness of some
+of the tricks which the earthquake shocks play is hardly to be
+explained, even by scientific men.  Sometimes, it would seem, the
+force runs round, making the solid ground eddy, as water eddies in
+a brook.  For it will make straight rows of trees crooked; it will
+twist whole walls round--or rather the ground on which the walls
+stand--without throwing them down; it will shift the stones of a
+pillar one on the other sideways, as if a giant had been trying to
+spin it like a teetotum, and so screwed it half in pieces.  There
+is a story told by a wise man, who saw the place himself, of the
+whole furniture of one house being hurled away by an earthquake,
+and buried under the ruins of another house; and of things carried
+hundreds of yards off, so that the neighbours went to law to
+settle who was the true owner of them.  Sometimes, again, the
+shock seems to come neither horizontally in waves, nor circularly
+in eddies, but vertically, that is, straight up from below; and
+then things--and people, alas! sometimes--are thrown up off the
+earth high into the air, just as things spring up off the table if
+you strike it smartly enough underneath.  By that same law (for
+there is a law for every sort of motion) it is that the earthquake
+shock sometimes hurls great rocks off a cliff into the valley
+below.  The shock runs through the mountain till it comes to the
+cliff at the end of it; and then the face of the cliff, if it be
+at all loose, flies off into the air.  You may see the very same
+thing happen, if you will put marbles or billiard-balls in a row
+touching each other, and strike the one nearest you smartly in the
+line of the row.  All the balls stand still, except the last one,
+and that flies off.  The shock, like the earthquake shock, has run
+through them all; but only the end one, which had nothing beyond
+it but soft air, has been moved; and when you grow old, and learn
+mathematics, you will know the law of motion according to which
+that happens, and learn to apply what the billiard-balls have
+taught you, to explain the wonders of an earthquake.  For in this
+case, as in so many more, you must watch Madam How at work on
+little and common things, to find out how she works in great and
+rare ones.  That is why Solomon says that "a fool's eyes are in
+the ends of the earth," because he is always looking out for
+strange things which he has not seen, and which he could not
+understand if he saw; instead of looking at the petty commonplace
+matters which are about his feet all day long, and getting from
+them sound knowledge, and the art of getting more sound knowledge
+still.
+
+Another terrible destruction which the earthquake brings, when it
+is close to the seaside, is the wash of a great sea wave, such as
+swept in last year upon the island of St. Thomas, in the West
+Indies; such as swept in upon the coast of Peru this year.  The
+sea moans, and sinks back, leaving the shore dry; and then comes
+in from the offing a mighty wall of water, as high as, or higher
+than, many a tall house; sweeps far inland, washing away quays and
+houses, and carrying great ships in with it; and then sweeps back
+again, leaving the ships high and dry, as ships were left in Peru
+this year.
+
+Now, how is that wave made?  Let us think.  Perhaps in many ways.
+But two of them I will tell you as simply as I can, because they
+seem the most likely, and probably the most common.
+
+Suppose, as the earthquake shock ran on, making the earth under
+the sea heave and fall in long earth-waves, the sea-bottom sank
+down.  Then the water on it would sink down too, and leave the
+shore dry; till the sea-bottom rose again, and hurled the water up
+again against the land.  This is one way of explaining it, and it
+may be true.  For certain it is, that earthquakes do move the
+bottom of the sea; and certain, too, that they move the water of
+the sea also, and with tremendous force.  For ships at sea during
+an earthquake feel such a blow from it (though it does them no
+harm) that the sailors often rush upon deck fancying that they
+have struck upon a rock; and the force which could give a ship,
+floating in water, such a blow as that, would be strong enough to
+hurl thousands of tons of water up the beach, and on to the land.
+
+But there is another way of accounting for this great sea wave,
+which I fancy comes true sometimes.
+
+Suppose you put an empty india-rubber ball into water, and then
+blow into it through a pipe.  Of course, you know, as the ball
+filled, the upper side of it would rise out of the water.  Now,
+suppose there were a party of little ants moving about upon that
+ball, and fancying it a great island, or perhaps the whole world--
+what would they think of the ball's filling and growing bigger?
+
+If they could see the sides of the basin or tub in which the ball
+was, and were sure that they did not move, then they would soon
+judge by them that they themselves were moving, and that the ball
+was rising out of the water.  But if the ants were so short-
+sighted that they could not see the sides of the basin, they would
+be apt to make a mistake, because they would then be like men on
+an island out of sight of any other land.  Then it would be
+impossible further to tell whether they were moving up, or whether
+the water was moving down; whether their ball was rising out of
+the water, or the water was sinking away from the ball.  They
+would probably say, "The water is sinking and leaving the ball
+dry."
+
+Do you understand that?  Then think what would happen if you
+pricked a hole in the ball.  The air inside would come hissing
+out, and the ball would sink again into the water.  But the ants
+would probably fancy the very opposite.  Their little heads would
+be full of the notion that the ball was solid and could not move,
+just as our heads are full of the notion that the earth is solid
+and cannot move; and they would say, "Ah! here is the water rising
+again."  Just so, I believe, when the sea seems to ebb away during
+the earthquake, the land is really being raised out of the sea,
+hundreds of miles of coast, perhaps, or a whole island, at once,
+by the force of the steam and gas imprisoned under the ground.
+That steam stretches and strains the solid rocks below, till they
+can bear no more, and snap, and crack, with frightful roar and
+clang; then out of holes and chasms in the ground rush steam,
+gases--often foul and poisonous ones--hot water, mud, flame,
+strange stones--all signs that the great boiler down below has
+burst at last.
+
+Then the strain is eased.  The earth sinks together again, as the
+ball did when it was pricked; and sinks lower, perhaps, than it
+was before:  and back rushes the sea, which the earth had thrust
+away while it rose, and sweeps in, destroying all before it.
+
+Of course, there is a great deal more to be said about all this:
+but I have no time to tell you now.  You will read it, I hope, for
+yourselves when you grow up, in the writings of far wiser men than
+I.  Or perhaps you may feel for yourselves in foreign lands the
+actual shock of a great earthquake, or see its work fresh done
+around you.  And if ever that happens, and you be preserved during
+the danger, you will learn for yourself, I trust, more about
+earthquakes than I can teach you, if you will only bear in mind
+the simple general rules for understanding the "how" of them which
+I have given you here.
+
+But you do not seem satisfied yet?  What is it that you want to
+know?
+
+Oh!  There was an earthquake here in England the other night,
+while you were asleep; and that seems to you too near to be
+pleasant.  Will there ever be earthquakes in England which will
+throw houses down, and bury people in the ruins?
+
+My dear child, I think you may set your heart at rest upon that
+point.  As far as the history of England goes back, and that is
+more than a thousand years, there is no account of any earthquake
+which has done any serious damage, or killed, I believe, a single
+human being.  The little earthquakes which are sometimes felt in
+England run generally up one line of country, from Devonshire
+through Wales, and up the Severn valley into Cheshire and
+Lancashire, and the south-west of Scotland; and they are felt more
+smartly there, I believe, because the rocks are harder there than
+here, and more tossed about by earthquakes which happened ages and
+ages ago, long before man lived on the earth.  I will show you the
+work of these earthquakes some day, in the tilting and twisting of
+the layers of rock, and in the cracks (faults, as they are called)
+which run through them in different directions.  I showed you some
+once, if you recollect, in the chalk cliff at Ramsgate--two set of
+cracks, sloping opposite ways, which I told you were made by two
+separate sets of earthquakes, long, long ago, perhaps while the
+chalk was still at the bottom of a deep sea.  But even in the
+rocky parts of England the earthquake-force seems to have all but
+died out.  Perhaps the crust of the earth has become too thick and
+solid there to be much shaken by the gases and steam below.  In
+this eastern part of England, meanwhile, there is but little
+chance that an earthquake will ever do much harm, because the
+ground here, for thousands of feet down, is not hard and rocky,
+but soft--sands, clays, chalk, and sands again; clays, soft
+limestones, and clays again--which all act as buffers to deaden
+the earthquake shocks, and deaden too the earthquake noise.
+
+And how?
+
+Put your ear to one end of a soft bolster, and let some one hit
+the other end.  You will hear hardly any noise, and will not feel
+the blow at all.  Put your ear to one end of a hard piece of wood,
+and let some one hit the other.  You will hear a smart tap; and
+perhaps feel a smart tap, too.  When you are older, and learn the
+laws of sound, and of motion among the particles of bodies, you
+will know why.  Meanwhile you may comfort yourself with the
+thought that Madam How has (doubtless by command of Lady Why)
+prepared a safe soft bed for this good people of Britain--not that
+they may lie and sleep on it, but work and till, plant and build
+and manufacture, and thrive in peace and comfort, we will trust
+and pray, for many a hundred years to come.  All that the steam
+inside the earth is likely to do to us, is to raise parts of this
+island (as Hartford Bridge Flats were raised, ages ago, out of the
+old icy sea) so slowly, probably, that no man can tell whether
+they are rising or not.  Or again, the steam-power may be even now
+dying out under our island, and letting parts of it sink slowly
+into the sea, as some wise friends of mine think that the fens in
+Norfolk and Cambridgeshire are sinking now.  I have shown you
+where that kind of work has gone on in Norfolk; how the brow of
+Sandringham Hill was once a sea-cliff, and Dersingham Bog at its
+foot a shallow sea; and therefore that the land has risen there.
+How, again, at Hunstanton Station there is a beach of sea-shells
+twenty feet above high-water mark, showing that the land has risen
+there likewise.  And how, farther north again, at Brancaster,
+there are forests of oak, and fir, and alder, with their roots
+still in the soil, far below high-water mark, and only uncovered
+at low tide; which is a plain sign that there the land has sunk.
+You surely recollect the sunken forest at Brancaster, and the
+beautiful shells we picked up in its gullies, and the millions of
+live Pholases boring into the clay and peat which once was firm
+dry land, fed over by giant oxen, and giant stags likewise, and
+perhaps by the mammoth himself, the great woolly elephant whose
+teeth the fishermen dredge up in the sea outside?  You recollect
+that?  Then remember that as that Norfolk shore has changed, so
+slowly but surely is the whole world changing around us.  Hartford
+Bridge Flat here, for instance, how has it changed!  Ages ago it
+was the gravelly bottom of a sea.  Then the steam-power
+underground raised it up slowly, through long ages, till it became
+dry land.  And ages hence, perhaps, it will have become a sea-
+bottom once more.  Washed slowly by the rain, or sunk by the dying
+out of the steam-power underground, it will go down again to the
+place from whence it came.  Seas will roll where we stand now, and
+new lands will rise where seas now roll.  For all things on this
+earth, from the tiniest flower to the tallest mountain, change and
+change all day long.  Every atom of matter moves perpetually; and
+nothing "continues in one stay."  The solid-seeming earth on which
+you stand is but a heaving bubble, bursting ever and anon in this
+place and in that.  Only above all, and through all, and with all,
+is One who does not move nor change, but is the same yesterday,
+to-day, and for ever.  And on Him, my child, and not on this
+bubble of an earth, do you and I, and all mankind, depend.
+
+But I have not yet told you why the Peruvians ought to have
+expected an earthquake.  True.  I will tell you another time.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--VOLCANOS
+
+
+
+You want to know why the Spaniards in Peru and Ecuador should have
+expected an earthquake.
+
+Because they had had so many already.  The shaking of the ground
+in their country had gone on perpetually, till they had almost
+ceased to care about it, always hoping that no very heavy shock
+would come; and being, now and then, terribly mistaken.
+
+For instance, in the province of Quito, in the year 1797, from
+thirty to forty thousand people were killed at once by an
+earthquake.  One would have thought that warning enough:  but the
+warning was not taken:  and now, this very year, thousands more
+have been killed in the very same country, in the very same way.
+
+They might have expected as much.  For their towns are built, most
+of them, close to volcanos--some of the highest and most terrible
+in the world.  And wherever there are volcanos there will be
+earthquakes.  You may have earthquakes without volcanos, now and
+then; but volcanos without earthquakes, seldom or never.
+
+How does that come to pass?  Does a volcano make earthquakes?  No;
+we may rather say that earthquakes are trying to make volcanos.
+For volcanos are the holes which the steam underground has burst
+open that it may escape into the air above.  They are the chimneys
+of the great blast-furnaces underground, in which Madam How pounds
+and melts up the old rocks, to make them into new ones, and spread
+them out over the land above.
+
+And are there many volcanos in the world?  You have heard of
+Vesuvius, of course, in Italy; and Etna, in Sicily; and Hecla, in
+Iceland.  And you have heard, too, of Kilauea, in the Sandwich
+Islands, and of Pele's Hair--the yellow threads of lava, like fine
+spun glass, which are blown from off its pools of fire, and which
+the Sandwich Islanders believed to be the hair of a goddess who
+lived in the crater;--and you have read, too, I hope, in Miss
+Yonge's Book of Golden Deeds, the noble story of the Christian
+chieftainess who, in order to persuade her subjects to become
+Christians also, went down into the crater and defied the goddess
+of the volcano, and came back unhurt and triumphant.
+
+But if you look at the map, you will see that there are many, many
+more.  Get Keith Johnston's Physical Atlas from the schoolroom--of
+course it is there (for a schoolroom without a physical atlas is
+like a needle without an eye)--and look at the map which is called
+"Phenomena of Volcanic Action."
+
+You will see in it many red dots, which mark the volcanos which
+are still burning:  and black dots, which mark those which have
+been burning at some time or other, not very long ago, scattered
+about the world.  Sometimes they are single, like the red dot at
+Otaheite, or at Easter Island in the Pacific.  Sometimes the are
+in groups, or clusters, like the cluster at the Sandwich Islands,
+or in the Friendly Islands, or in New Zealand.  And if we look in
+the Atlantic, we shall see four clusters:  one in poor half-
+destroyed Iceland, in the far north, one in the Azores, one in the
+Canaries, and one in the Cape de Verds.  And there is one dot in
+those Canaries which we must not overlook, for it is no other than
+the famous Peak of Teneriffe, a volcano which is hardly burnt out
+yet, and may burn up again any day, standing up out of the sea
+more than 12,000 feet high still, and once it must have been
+double that height.  Some think that it is perhaps the true Mount
+Atlas, which the old Greeks named when first they ventured out of
+the Straits of Gibraltar down the coast of Africa, and saw the
+great peak far to the westward, with the clouds cutting off its
+top; and said that it was a mighty giant, the brother of the
+Evening Star, who held up the sky upon his shoulders, in the midst
+of the Fortunate Islands, the gardens of the daughter of the
+Evening Star, full of strange golden fruits; and that Perseus had
+turned him into stone, when he passed him with the Gorgon's Head.
+
+But you will see, too, that most of these red and black dots run
+in crooked lines; and that many of the clusters run in lines
+likewise.
+
+Look at one line:  by far the largest on the earth.  You will
+learn a good deal of geography from it.
+
+The red dots begin at a place called the Terribles, on the east
+side of the Bay of Bengal.  They run on, here and there, along the
+islands of Sumatra and Java, and through the Spice Islands; and at
+New Guinea the line of red dots forks.  One branch runs south-
+east, through islands whose names you never heard, to the Friendly
+Islands, and to New Zealand.  The other runs north, through the
+Philippines, through Japan, through Kamschatka; and then there is
+a little break of sea, between Asia and America:  but beyond it,
+the red dots begin again in the Aleutian Islands, and then turn
+down the whole west coast of America, down from Mount Elias (in
+what was, till lately, Russian America) towards British Columbia.
+Then, after a long gap, there are one or two in Lower California
+(and we must not forget the terrible earthquake which has just
+shaken San Francisco, between those two last places); and when we
+come down to Mexico we find the red dots again plentiful, and only
+too plentiful; for they mark the great volcanic line of Mexico, of
+which you will read, I hope, some day, in Humboldt's works.  But
+the line does not stop there.  After the little gap of the Isthmus
+of Panama, it begins again in Quito, the very country which has
+just been shaken, and in which stand the huge volcanos Chimborazo,
+Pasto, Antisana, Cotopaxi, Pichincha, Tunguragua,--smooth cones
+from 15,000 to 20,000 feet high, shining white with snow, till the
+heat inside melts it off, and leaves the cinders of which the
+peaks are made all black and ugly among the clouds, ready to burst
+in smoke and fire.  South of them again, there is a long gap, and
+then another line of red dots--Arequiba, Chipicani, Gualatieri,
+Atacama,--as high as, or higher than those in Quito; and this,
+remember, is the other country which has just been shaken.  On the
+sea-shore below those volcanos stood the hapless city of Arica,
+whose ruins we saw in the picture.  Then comes another gap; and
+then a line of more volcanos in Chili, at the foot of which
+happened that fearful earthquake of 1835 (besides many more) of
+which you will read some day in that noble book The Voyage of the
+Beagle; and so the line of dots runs down to the southernmost
+point of America.
+
+What a line we have traced!  Long enough to go round the world if
+it were straight.  A line of holes out of which steam, and heat,
+and cinders, and melted stones are rushing up, perpetually, in one
+place and another.  Now the holes in this line which are near each
+other have certainly something to do with each other.  For
+instance, when the earth shook the other day round the volcanos of
+Quito, it shook also round the volcanos of Peru, though they were
+600 miles away.  And there are many stories of earthquakes being
+felt, or awful underground thunder heard, while volcanos were
+breaking out hundreds of miles away.  I will give you a very
+curious instance of that.
+
+If you look at the West Indies on the map, you will see a line of
+red dots runs through the Windward Islands:  there are two
+volcanos in them, one in Guadaloupe, and one in St. Vincent (I
+will tell you a curious story, presently, about that last), and
+little volcanos (if they have ever been real volcanos at all),
+which now only send out mud, in Trinidad.  There the red dots
+stop:  but then begins along the north coast of South America a
+line of mountain country called Cumana, and Caraccas, which has
+often been horribly shaken by earthquakes.  Now once, when the
+volcano in St. Vincent began to pour out a vast stream of melted
+lava, a noise like thunder was heard underground, over thousands
+of square miles beyond those mountains, in the plains of Calabozo,
+and on the banks of the Apure, more than 600 miles away from the
+volcano,--a plain sign that there was something underground which
+joined them together, perhaps a long crack in the earth.  Look for
+yourselves at the places, and you will see that (as Humboldt says)
+it is as strange as if an eruption of Mount Vesuvius was heard in
+the north of France.
+
+So it seems as if these lines of volcanos stood along cracks in
+the rind of the earth, through which the melted stuff inside was
+for ever trying to force its way; and that, as the crack got
+stopped up in one place by the melted stuff cooling and hardening
+again into stone, it was burst in another place, and a fresh
+volcano made, or an old one re-opened.
+
+Now we can understand why earthquakes should be most common round
+volcanos; and we can understand, too, why they would be worst
+before a volcano breaks out, because then the steam is trying to
+escape; and we can understand, too, why people who live near
+volcanos are glad to see them blazing and spouting, because then
+they have hope that the steam has found its way out, and will not
+make earthquakes any more for a while.  But still that is merely
+foolish speculation on chance.  Volcanos can never be trusted.  No
+one knows when one will break out, or what it will do; and those
+who live close to them--as the city of Naples is close to Mount
+Vesuvius--must not be astonished if they are blown up or swallowed
+up, as that great and beautiful city of Naples may be without a
+warning, any day.
+
+For what happened to that same Mount Vesuvius nearly 1800 years
+ago, in the old Roman times?  For ages and ages it had been lying
+quiet, like any other hill.  Beautiful cities were built at its
+foot, filled with people who were as handsome, and as comfortable,
+and (I am afraid) as wicked, as people ever were on earth.  Fair
+gardens, vineyards, olive-yards, covered the mountain slopes.  It
+was held to be one of the Paradises of the world.  As for the
+mountain's being a burning mountain, who ever thought of that?  To
+be sure, on the top of it was a great round crater, or cup, a mile
+or more across, and a few hundred yards deep.  But that was all
+overgrown with bushes and wild vines, full of boars and deer.
+What sign of fire was there in that?  To be sure, also, there was
+an ugly place below by the sea-shore, called the Phlegraen fields,
+where smoke and brimstone came out of the ground, and a lake
+called Avernus over which poisonous gases hung, and which (old
+stories told) was one of the mouths of the Nether Pit.  But what
+of that?  It had never harmed any one, and how could it harm them?
+
+So they all lived on, merrily and happily enough, till, in the
+year A.D. 79 (that was eight years, you know, after the Emperor
+Titus destroyed Jerusalem), there was stationed in the Bay of
+Naples a Roman admiral, called Pliny, who was also a very studious
+and learned man, and author of a famous old book on natural
+history.  He was staying on shore with his sister; and as he sat
+in his study she called him out to see a strange cloud which had
+been hanging for some time over the top of Mount Vesuvius.  It was
+in shape just like a pine-tree; not, of course, like one of our
+branching Scotch firs here, but like an Italian stone pine, with a
+long straight stem and a flat parasol-shaped top.  Sometimes it
+was blackish, sometimes spotted; and the good Admiral Pliny, who
+was always curious about natural science, ordered his cutter and
+went away across the bay to see what it could be.  Earthquake
+shocks had been very common for the last few days; but I do not
+suppose that Pliny had any notion that the earthquakes and the
+cloud had aught to do with each other.  However, he soon found out
+that they had, and to his cost.  When he got near the opposite
+shore some of the sailors met him and entreated him to turn back.
+Cinders and pumice-stones were falling down from the sky, and
+flames breaking out of the mountain above.  But Pliny would go on:
+he said that if people were in danger, it was his duty to help
+them; and that he must see this strange cloud, and note down the
+different shapes into which it changed.  But the hot ashes fell
+faster and faster; the sea ebbed out suddenly, and left them
+nearly dry, and Pliny turned away to a place called Stabiae, to
+the house of his friend Pomponianus, who was just going to escape
+in a boat.  Brave Pliny told him not to be afraid, ordered his
+bath like a true Roman gentleman, and then went into dinner with a
+cheerful face.  Flames came down from the mountain, nearer and
+nearer as the night drew on; but Pliny persuaded his friend that
+they were only fires in some villages from which the peasants had
+fled, and then went to bed and slept soundly.  However, in the
+middle of the night they found the courtyard being fast filled
+with cinders, and, if they had not woke up the Admiral in time, he
+would never have been able to get out of the house.  The
+earthquake shocks grew stronger and fiercer, till the house was
+ready to fall; and Pliny and his friend, and the sailors and the
+slaves, all fled into the open fields, amid a shower of stones and
+cinders, tying pillows over their heads to prevent their being
+beaten down.  The day had come by this time, but not the dawn--for
+it was still pitch dark as night.  They went down to their boats
+upon the shore; but the sea raged so horribly that there was no
+getting on board of them.  Then Pliny grew tired, and made his men
+spread a sail for him, and lay down on it; but there came down
+upon them a rush of flames, and a horrible smell of sulphur, and
+all ran for their lives.  Some of the slaves tried to help the
+Admiral upon his legs; but he sank down again overpowered with the
+brimstone fumes, and so was left behind.  When they came back
+again, there he lay dead, but with his clothes in order and his
+face as quiet as if he had been only sleeping.  And that was the
+end of a brave and learned man--a martyr to duty and to the love
+of science.
+
+But what was going on in the meantime?  Under clouds of ashes,
+cinders, mud, lava, three of those happy cities were buried at
+once--Herculaneum, Pompeii, Stabiae.  They were buried just as the
+people had fled from them, leaving the furniture and the
+earthenware, often even jewels and gold, behind, and here and
+there among them a human being who had not had time to escape from
+the dreadful deluge of dust.  The ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii
+have been dug into since; and the paintings, especially in
+Pompeii, are found upon the walls still fresh, preserved from the
+air by the ashes which have covered them in.  When you are older
+you perhaps will go to Naples, and see in its famous museum the
+curiosities which have been dug out of the ruined cities; and you
+will walk, I suppose, along the streets of Pompeii and see the
+wheel-tracks in the pavement, along which carts and chariots
+rumbled 2000 years ago.  Meanwhile, if you go nearer home, to the
+Crystal Palace and to the Pompeian Court, as it is called, you
+will see an exact model of one of these old buried houses, copied
+even to the very paintings on the wells, and judge for yourself,
+as far as a little boy can judge, what sort of life these
+thoughtless, luckless people lived 2000 years ago.
+
+And what had become of Vesuvius, the treacherous mountain?  Half
+or more than half of the side of the old crater had been blown
+away, and what was left, which is now called the Monte Somma,
+stands in a half circle round the new cone and new crater which is
+burning at this very day.  True, after that eruption which killed
+Pliny, Vesuvius fell asleep again, and did not awake for 134
+years, and then again for 269 years but it has been growing more
+and more restless as the ages have passed on, and now hardly a
+year passes without its sending out smoke and stones from its
+crater, and streams of lava from its sides.
+
+And now, I suppose, you will want to know what a volcano is like,
+and what a cone, and a crater, and lava are?
+
+What a volcano is like, it is easy enough to show you; for they
+are the most simply and beautifully shaped of all mountains, and
+they are alike all over the world, whether they be large or small.
+Almost every volcano in the world, I believe, is, or has been
+once, of the shape which you see in the drawing opposite; even
+those volcanos in the Sandwich Islands, of which you have often
+heard, which are now great lakes of boiling fire upon flat downs,
+without any cone to them at all.  They, I believe, are volcanos
+which have fallen in ages ago:  just as in Java a whole burning
+mountain fell in on the night of the 11th of August, in the year
+1772.  Then, after a short and terrible earthquake, a bright cloud
+suddenly covered the whole mountain.  The people who dwelt around
+it tried to escape; but before the poor souls could get away the
+earth sunk beneath their feet, and the whole mountain fell in and
+was swallowed up with a noise as if great cannon were being fired.
+Forty villages and nearly 3000 people were destroyed, and where
+the mountain had been was only a plain of red-hot stones.  In the
+same way, in the year 1698, the top of a mountain in Quito fell in
+in a single night, leaving only two immense peaks of rock behind,
+and pouring out great floods of mud mixed with dead fish; for
+there are underground lakes among those volcanos which swarm with
+little fish which never see the light.
+
+But most volcanos as I say, are, or have been, the shape of the
+one which you see here.  This is Cotopaxi, in Quito, more than
+19,000 feet in height.  All those sloping sides are made of
+cinders and ashes, braced together, I suppose, by bars of solid
+lava-stone inside, which prevent the whole from crumbling down.
+The upper part, you see, is white with snow, as far down as a line
+which is 15,000 feet above the sea; for the mountain is in the
+tropics, close to the equator, and the snow will not lie in that
+hot climate any lower down.  But now and then the snow melts off
+and rushes down the mountain side in floods of water and of mud,
+and the cindery cone of Cotopaxi stands out black and dreadful
+against the clear blue sky, and then the people of that country
+know what is coming.  The mountain is growing so hot inside that
+it melts off its snowy covering; and soon it will burst forth with
+smoke and steam, and red-hot stones and earthquakes, which will
+shake the ground, and roars that will be heard, it may be,
+hundreds of miles away.
+
+And now for the words cone, crater, lava.  If I can make you
+understand those words, you will see why volcanos must be in
+general of the shape of Cotopaxi.
+
+Cone, crater, lava:  those words make up the alphabet of volcano
+learning.  The cone is the outside of a huge chimney; the crater
+is the mouth of it.  The lava is the ore which is being melted in
+the furnace below, that it may flow out over the surface of the
+old land, and make new land instead.
+
+And where is the furnace itself?  Who can tell that?  Under the
+roots of the mountains, under the depths of the sea; down "the
+path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not
+seen:  the lion's whelp hath not trodden it, nor the fierce lion
+passed by it.  There He putteth forth His hand upon the rock; He
+overturneth the mountain by the roots; He cutteth out rivers among
+the rocks; and His eye seeth every precious thing"--while we, like
+little ants, run up and down outside the earth, scratching, like
+ants, a few feet down, and calling that a deep ravine; or peeping
+a few feet down into the crater of a volcano, unable to guess what
+precious things may lie below--below even the fire which blazes
+and roars up through the thin crust of the earth.  For of the
+inside of this earth we know nothing whatsoever:  we only know
+that it is, on an average, several times as heavy as solid rock;
+but how that can be, we know not.
+
+So let us look at the chimney, and what comes out of it; for we
+can see very little more.
+
+Why is a volcano like a cone?
+
+For the same cause for which a molehill is like a cone, though a
+very rough one; and that the little heaps which the burrowing
+beetles make on the moor, or which the ant-lions in France make in
+the sand, are all something in the shape of a cone, with a hole
+like a crater in the middle.  What the beetle and the ant-lion do
+on a very little scale, the steam inside the earth does on a great
+scale.  When once it has forced a vent into the outside air, it
+tears out the rocks underground, grinds them small against each
+other, often into the finest dust, and blasts them out of the hole
+which it has made.  Some of them fall back into the hole, and are
+shot out again:  but most of them fall round the hole, most of
+them close to it, and fewer of them farther off, till they are
+piled up in a ring round it, just as the sand is piled up round a
+beetle's burrow.  For days, and weeks, and months this goes on;
+even it may be for hundreds of years:  till a great cone is formed
+round the steam vent, hundreds or thousands of feet in height, of
+dust and stones, and of cinders likewise.  For recollect, that
+when the steam has blown away the cold earth and rock near the
+surface of the ground, it begins blowing out the hot rocks down
+below, red-hot, white-hot, and at last actually melted.  But
+these, as they are hurled into the cool air above, become ashes,
+cinders, and blocks of stone again, making the hill on which they
+fall bigger and bigger continually.  And thus does wise Madam How
+stand in no need of bricklayers, but makes her chimneys build
+themselves.
+
+And why is the mouth of the chimney called a crater?
+
+Crater, as you know, is Greek for a cup.  And the mouth of these
+chimneys, when they have become choked and stopped working, are
+often just the shape of a cup, or (as the Germans call them)
+kessels, which means kettles, or caldrons.  I have seen some of
+them as beautifully and exactly rounded as if a cunning engineer
+had planned them, and had them dug out with the spade.  At first,
+of course, their sides and bottom are nothing but loose stones,
+cinders, slag, ashes, such as would be thrown out of a furnace.
+But Madam How, who, whenever she makes an ugly desolate place,
+always tries to cover over its ugliness, and set something green
+to grow over it, and make it pretty once more, does so often and
+often by her worn-out craters.  I have seen them covered with
+short sweet turf, like so many chalk downs.  I have seen them,
+too, filled with bushes, which held woodcocks and wild boars.
+Once I came on a beautiful round crater on the top of a mountain,
+which was filled at the bottom with a splendid crop of potatoes.
+Though Madam How had not put them there herself, she had at least
+taught the honest Germans to put them there.  And often Madam How
+turns her worn-out craters into beautiful lakes.  There are many
+such crater-lakes in Italy, as you will see if ever you go there;
+as you may see in English galleries painted by Wilson, a famous
+artist who died before you were born.  You recollect Lord
+Macaulay's ballad, "The Battle of the Lake Regillus"?  Then that
+Lake Regillus (if I recollect right) is one of these round crater
+lakes.  Many such deep clear blue lakes have I seen in the Eifel,
+in Germany; and many a curious plant have I picked on their
+shores, where once the steam blasted, and the earthquake roared,
+and the ash-clouds rushed up high into the heaven, and buried all
+the land around in dust, which is now fertile soil.  And long did
+I puzzle to find out why the water stood in some craters, while
+others, within a mile of them perhaps, were perfectly dry.  That I
+never found out for myself.  But learned men tell me that the
+ashes which fall back into the crater, if the bottom of it be wet
+from rain, will sometimes "set" (as it is called) into a hard
+cement; and so make the bottom of the great bowl waterproof, as if
+it were made of earthenware.
+
+But what gives the craters this cup-shape at first?
+
+Think--While the steam and stones are being blown out, the crater
+is an open funnel, with more or less upright walls inside.  As the
+steam grows weaker, fewer and fewer stones fall outside, and more
+and more fall back again inside.  At last they quite choke up the
+bottom of the great round hole.  Perhaps, too, the lava or melted
+rock underneath cools and grows hard, and that chokes up the hole
+lower down.  Then, down from the round edge of the crater the
+stones and cinders roll inward more and more.  The rains wash them
+down, the wind blows them down.  They roll to the middle, and meet
+each other, and stop.  And so gradually the steep funnel becomes a
+round cup.  You may prove for yourself that it must be so, if you
+will try.  Do you not know that if you dig a round hole in the
+ground, and leave it to crumble in, it is sure to become cup-
+shaped at last, though at first its sides may have been quite
+upright, like those of a bucket?  If you do not know, get a trowel
+and make your little experiment.
+
+And now you ought to understand what "cone" and "crater" mean.
+And more, if you will think for yourself, you may guess what would
+come out of a volcano when it broke out "in an eruption," as it is
+usually called.  First, clouds of steam and dust (what you would
+call smoke); then volleys of stones, some cool, some burning hot;
+and at the last, because it lies lowest of all, the melted rock
+itself, which is called lava.
+
+And where would that come out?  At the top of the chimney?  At the
+top of the cone?
+
+No.  Madam How, as I told you, usually makes things make
+themselves.  She has made the chimney of the furnace make itself;
+and next she will make the furnace-door make itself.
+
+The melted lava rises in the crater--the funnel inside the cone--
+but it never gets to the top.  It is so enormously heavy that the
+sides of the cone cannot bear its weight, and give way low down.
+And then, through ashes and cinders, the melted lava burrows out,
+twisting and twirling like an enormous fiery earth-worm, till it
+gets to the air outside, and runs off down the mountain in a
+stream of fire.  And so you may see (as are to be seen on Vesuvius
+now) two eruptions at once--one of burning stones above, and one
+of melted lava below.
+
+And what is lava?
+
+That, I think, I must tell you another time.  For when I speak of
+it I shall have to tell you more about Madam How, and her ways of
+making the ground on which you stand, than I can say just now.
+But if you want to know (as I dare say you do) what the eruption
+of a volcano is like, you may read what follows.  I did not see it
+happen; for I never had the good fortune of seeing a mountain
+burning, though I have seen many and many a one which has been
+burnt--extinct volcanos, as they are called.
+
+The man who saw it--a very good friend of mine, and a very good
+man of science also--went last year to see an eruption on
+Vesuvius, not from the main crater, but from a small one which had
+risen up suddenly on the outside of it; and he gave me leave (when
+I told him that I was writing for children) to tell them what he
+saw.
+
+This new cone, he said, was about 200 feet high, and perhaps 80 or
+100 feet across at the top.  And as he stood below it (it was not
+safe to go up it) smoke rolled up from its top, "rosy pink below,"
+from the glare of the caldron, and above "faint greenish or
+blueish silver of indescribable beauty, from the light of the
+moon."  But more--By good chance, the cone began to send out, not
+smoke only, but brilliant burning stones.  "Each explosion," he
+says, "was like a vast girandole of rockets, with a noise (such as
+rockets would make) like the waves on a beach, or the wind blowing
+through shrouds.  The mountain was trembling the whole time.  So
+it went on for two hours and more; sometimes eight or ten
+explosions in a minute, and more than 1000 stones in each, some as
+large as two bricks end to end.  The largest ones mostly fell back
+into the crater; but the smaller ones being thrown higher, and
+more acted on by the wind, fell in immense numbers on the leeward
+slope of the cone" (of course, making it bigger and bigger, as I
+have explained already to you), and of course, as they were
+intensely hot and bright, making the cone look as if it too was
+red-hot.  But it was not so, he says, really.  The colour of the
+stones was rather "golden, and they spotted the black cone over
+with their golden showers, the smaller ones stopping still, the
+bigger ones rolling down, and jumping along just like hares."  "A
+wonderful pedestal," he says, "for the explosion which surmounted
+it."  How high the stones flew up he could not tell.  "There was
+generally one which went much higher than the rest, and pierced
+upwards towards the moon, who looked calmly down, mocking such
+vain attempts to reach her."  The large stones, of course, did not
+rise so high; and some, he says, "only just appeared over the rim
+of the cone, above which they came floating leisurely up, to show
+their brilliant forms and intense white light for an instant, and
+then subside again."
+
+Try and picture that to yourselves, remembering that this was only
+a little side eruption, of no more importance to the whole
+mountain than the fall of a slate off the roof is of importance to
+the whole house.  And then think how mean and weak man's
+fireworks, and even man's heaviest artillery, are compared with
+the terrible beauty and terrible strength of Madam How's artillery
+underneath our feet.
+
+                 C
+               / | \
+              /  |  \
+          A  /---+---\  E
+            /    |    \
+           /-----+-----\  E
+Ground    /      | B    \      Ground
+---------/       |       \------------
+        |  D  |  | D |  D  |
+      --+-----+--+---+-----+------
+        |     |  |   |     |
+                 |
+
+Now look at this figure.  It represents a section of a volcano;
+that is, one cut in half to show you the inside.  A is the cone of
+cinders.  B, the black line up through the middle, is the funnel,
+or crack, through which steam, ashes, lava, and everything else
+rises.  C is the crater mouth.  D D D, which looks broken, are the
+old rocks which the steam heaved up and burst before it could get
+out.  And what are the black lines across, marked E E E?  They are
+the streams of lava which have burrowed out, some covered up again
+in cinders, some lying bare in the open air, some still inside the
+cone, bracing it together, holding it up.  Something like this is
+the inside of a volcano.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF A GRAIN OF SOIL
+
+
+
+Why, you ask, are there such terrible things as volcanos?  Of what
+use can they be?
+
+They are of use enough, my child; and of many more uses, doubt
+not, than we know as yet, or ever shall know.  But of one of their
+uses I can tell you.
+
+They make, or help to make, divers and sundry curious things, from
+gunpowder to your body and mine.
+
+What?  I can understand their helping to make gunpowder, because
+the sulphur in it is often found round volcanos; and I know the
+story of the brave Spaniard who, when his fellows wanted materials
+for gunpowder, had himself lowered in a basket down the crater of
+a South American volcano, and gathered sulphur for them off the
+burning cliffs:  but how can volcanos help to make me?  Am I made
+of lava?  Or is there lava in me?
+
+My child, I did not say that volcanos helped to make you.  I said
+that they helped to make your body; which is a very different
+matter, as I beg you to remember, now and always.  Your body is no
+more you yourself than the hoop which you trundle, or the pony
+which you ride.  It is, like them, your servant, your tool, your
+instrument, your organ, with which you work:  and a very useful,
+trusty, cunningly-contrived organ it is; and therefore I advise
+you to make good use of it, for you are responsible for it.  But
+you yourself are not your body, or your brain, but something else,
+which we call your soul, your spirit, your life.  And that "you
+yourself" would remain just the same if it were taken out of your
+body, and put into the body of a bee, or of a lion, or any other
+body; or into no body at all.  At least so I believe; and so, I am
+happy to say, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred
+and ninety-nine people out of every million have always believed,
+because they have used their human instincts and their common
+sense, and have obeyed (without knowing it) the warning of a great
+and good philosopher called Herder, that "The organ is in no case
+the power which works by it;" which is as much as to say, that the
+engine is not the engine-driver, nor the spade the gardener.
+
+There have always been, and always will be, a few people who
+cannot see that.  They think that a man's soul is part of his
+body, and that he himself is not one thing, but a great number of
+things.  They think that his mind and character are only made up
+of all the thoughts, and feelings, and recollections which have
+passed through his brain; and that as his brain changes, he
+himself must change, and become another person, and then another
+person again, continually.  But do you not agree with them:  but
+keep in mind wise Herder's warning that you are not to "confound
+the organ with the power," or the engine with the driver, or your
+body with yourself:  and then we will go on and consider how a
+volcano, and the lava which flows from it, helps to make your
+body.
+
+Now I know that the Scotch have a saying, "That you cannot make
+broth out of whinstones" (which is their name for lava).  But,
+though they are very clever people, they are wrong there.  I never
+saw any broth in Scotland, as far as I know, but what whinstones
+had gone to the making of it; nor a Scotch boy who had not eaten
+many a bit of whinstone, and been all the better for it.
+
+Of course, if you simply put the whinstones into a kettle and
+boiled them, you would not get much out of them by such rough
+cookery as that.  But Madam How is the best and most delicate of
+all cooks; and she knows how to pound, and soak, and stew
+whinstones so delicately, that she can make them sauce and
+seasoning for meat, vegetables, puddings, and almost everything
+that you eat; and can put into your veins things which were
+spouted up red-hot by volcanos, ages and ages since, perhaps at
+the bottom of ancient seas which are now firm dry land.
+
+This is very strange--as all Madam How's doings are.  And you
+would think it stranger still if you had ever seen the flowing of
+a lava stream.
+
+Out of a cave of slag and cinders in the black hillside rushes a
+golden river, flowing like honey, and yet so tough that you cannot
+thrust a stick into it, and so heavy that great stones (if you
+throw them on it) float on the top, and are carried down like
+corks on water.  It is so hot that you cannot stand near it more
+than a few seconds; hotter, perhaps, than any fire you ever saw:
+but as it flows, the outside of it cools in the cool air, and gets
+covered with slag and cinders, something like those which you may
+see thrown out of the furnaces in the Black Country of
+Staffordshire.  Sometimes these cling together above the lava
+stream, and make a tunnel, through the cracks in which you may see
+the fiery river rushing and roaring down below.  But mostly they
+are kept broken and apart, and roll and slide over each other on
+the top of the lava, crashing and clanging as they grind together
+with a horrid noise.  Of course that stream, like all streams,
+runs towards the lower grounds.  It slides down glens, and fills
+them up; down the beds of streams, driving off the water in
+hissing steam; and sometimes (as it did in Iceland a few years
+ago) falls over some cliff, turning what had been a water-fall
+into a fire-fall, and filling up the pool below with blocks of
+lava suddenly cooled, with a clang and roar like that of chains
+shaken or brazen vessels beaten, which is heard miles and miles
+away.  Of course, woe to the crops and gardens which stand in its
+way.  It crawls over them all and eats them up.  It shoves down
+houses; it sets woods on fire, and sends the steam and gas out of
+the tree-trunks hissing into the air.  And (curiously enough) it
+does this often without touching the trees themselves.  It flows
+round the trunks (it did so in a wood in the Sandwich Islands a
+few years ago), and of course sets them on fire by its heat, till
+nothing is left of them but blackened posts.  But the moisture
+which comes out of the poor tree in steam blows so hard against
+the lava round that it can never touch the tree, and a round hole
+is left in the middle of the lava where the tree was.  Sometimes,
+too, the lava will spit out liquid fire among the branches of the
+trees, which hangs down afterwards from them in tassels of slag,
+and yet, by the very same means, the steam in the branches will
+prevent the liquid fire burning them off, or doing anything but
+just scorch the bark.
+
+But I can tell you a more curious story still.  The lava stream,
+you must know, is continually sending out little jets of gas and
+steam:  some of it it may have brought up from the very inside of
+the earth; most of it, I suspect, comes from the damp herbage and
+damp soil over which it runs.  Be that as it may, a lava stream
+out of Mount Etna, in Sicily, came once down straight upon the
+town of Catania.  Everybody thought that the town would be
+swallowed up; and the poor people there (who knew no better) began
+to pray to St. Agatha--a famous saint, who, they say, was martyred
+there ages ago--and who, they fancy, has power in heaven to save
+them from the lava stream.  And really what happened was enough to
+make ignorant people, such as they were, think that St. Agatha had
+saved them.  The lava stream came straight down upon the town
+wall.  Another foot, and it would have touched it, and have begun
+shoving it down with a force compared with which all the
+battering-rams that you ever read of in ancient histories would be
+child's toys.  But lo and behold! when the lava stream got within
+a few inches of the wall it stopped, and began to rear itself
+upright and build itself into a wall beside the wall.  It rose and
+rose, till I believe in one place it overtopped the wall and began
+to curl over in a crest.  All expected that it would fall over
+into the town at last:  but no, there it stopped, and cooled, and
+hardened, and left the town unhurt.  All the inhabitants said, of
+course, that St. Agatha had done it:  but learned men found out
+that, as usual Madam How had done it, by making it do itself.  The
+lava was so full of gas, which was continually blowing out in
+little jets, that when it reached the wall, it actually blew
+itself back from the wall; and, as the wall was luckily strong
+enough not to be blown down, the lava kept blowing itself back
+till it had time to cool.  And so, my dear child, there was no
+miracle at all in the matter; and the poor people of Catania had
+to thank not St. Agatha, and any interference of hers, but simply
+Him who can preserve, just as He can destroy, by those laws of
+nature which are the breath of His mouth and the servants of His
+will.
+
+But in many a case the lava does not stop.  It rolls on and on
+over the downs and through the valleys, till it reaches the sea-
+shore, as it did in Hawaii in the Sandwich Islands this very year.
+And then it cools, of course; but often not before it has killed
+the fish by its sulphurous gases and heat, perhaps for miles
+around.  And there is good reason to believe that the fossil fish
+which we so often find in rocks, perfect in every bone, lying
+sometimes in heaps, and twisted (as I have seen them) as if they
+had died suddenly and violently, were killed in this very way,
+either by heat from lava streams, or else by the bursting up of
+gases poisoning the water, in earthquakes and eruptions in the
+bottom of the sea.  I could tell you many stories of fish being
+killed in thousands by earthquakes and volcanos during the last
+few years.  But we have not time to tell about everything
+
+And now you will ask me, with more astonishment than ever, what
+possible use can there be in these destroying streams of fire?
+And certainly, if you had ever seen a lava stream even when cool,
+and looked down, as I have done, at the great river of rough black
+blocks streaming away far and wide over the land, you would think
+it the most hideous and the most useless thing you ever saw.  And
+yet, my dear child, there is One who told men to judge not
+according to the appearance, but to judge righteous judgment.  He
+said that about matters spiritual and human:  but it is quite as
+true about matters natural, which also are His work, and all obey
+His will.
+
+Now if you had seen, as I have seen, close round the edges of
+these lava streams, and sometimes actually upon them, or upon the
+great bed of dust and ashes which have been hurled far and wide
+out of ancient volcanos, happy homesteads, rich crops, hemp and
+flax, and wheat, tobacco, lucerne, roots, and vineyards laden with
+white and purple grapes, you would have begun to suspect that the
+lava streams were not, after all, such very bad neighbours.  And
+when I tell you that volcanic soils (as they are called), that is,
+soil which has at first been lava or ashes, are generally the
+richest soils in the world--that, for instance (as some one told
+me the other day), there is soil in the beautiful island of
+Madeira so thin that you cannot dig more than two or three inches
+down without coming to the solid rock of lava, or what is harder
+even, obsidian (which is the black glass which volcanos sometimes
+make, and which the old Mexicans used to chip into swords and
+arrows, because they had no steel)--and that this soil, thin as it
+is, is yet so fertile, that in it used to be grown the grapes of
+which the famous Madeira wine was made--when you remember this,
+and when you remember, too, the Lothians of Scotland (about which
+I shall have to say a little to you just now), then you will
+perhaps agree with me, that Lady Why has not been so very wrong in
+setting Madam How to pour out lava and ashes upon the surface of
+the earth.
+
+For see--down below, under the roots of the mountains, Madam How
+works continually like a chemist in his laboratory, melting
+together all the rocks, which are the bones and leavings of the
+old worlds.  If they stayed down below there, they would be of no
+use; while they will be of use up here in the open air.  For, year
+by year--by the washing of rain and rivers, and also, I am sorry
+to say, by the ignorant and foolish waste of mankind--thousands
+and millions of tons of good stuff are running into the sea every
+year, which would, if it could be kept on land, make food for men
+and animals, plants and trees.  So, in order to supply the
+continual waste of this upper world, Madam How is continually
+melting up the under world, and pouring it out of the volcanos
+like manure, to renew the face of the earth.  In these lava rocks
+and ashes which she sends up there are certain substances, without
+which men cannot live--without which a stalk of corn or grass
+cannot grow.  Without potash, without magnesia, both of which are
+in your veins and mine--without silicates (as they are called),
+which give flint to the stems of corn and of grass, and so make
+them stiff and hard, and able to stand upright--and very probably
+without the carbonic acid gas, which comes out of the volcanos,
+and is taken up by the leaves of plants, and turned by Madam How's
+cookery into solid wood--without all these things, and I suspect
+without a great many more things which come out of volcanos--I do
+not see how this beautiful green world could get on at all.
+
+Of course, when the lava first cools on the surface of the ground
+it is hard enough, and therefore barren enough.  But Madam How
+sets to work upon it at once, with that delicate little water-
+spade of hers, which we call rain, and with that alone, century
+after century, and age after age, she digs the lava stream down,
+atom by atom, and silts it over the country round in rich manure.
+So that if Madam How has been a rough and hasty workwoman in
+pumping her treasures up out of her mine with her great steam-
+pumps, she shows herself delicate and tender and kindly enough in
+giving them away afterwards.
+
+Nay, even the fine dust which is sometimes blown out of volcanos
+is useful to countries far away.  So light it is, that it rises
+into the sky and is wafted by the wind across the seas.  So, in
+the year 1783, ashes from the Skaptar Jokull, in Iceland, were
+carried over the north of Scotland, and even into Holland,
+hundreds of miles to the south.
+
+So, again, when in the year 1812 the volcano of St. Vincent, in
+the West India Islands, poured out torrents of lava, after mighty
+earthquakes which shook all that part of the world, a strange
+thing happened (about which I have often heard from those who saw
+it) in the island of Barbados, several hundred miles away.  For
+when the sun rose in the morning (it was a Sunday morning), the
+sky remained more dark than any night, and all the poor negroes
+crowded terrified out of their houses into the streets, fancying
+the end of the world was come.  But a learned man who was there,
+finding that, though the sun was risen, it was still pitchy dark,
+opened his window, and found that it was stuck fast by something
+on the ledge outside, and, when he thrust it open, found the ledge
+covered deep in soft red dust; and he instantly said, like a wise
+man as he was, "The volcano of St. Vincent must have broken out,
+and these are the ashes from it."  Then he ran down stairs and
+quieted the poor negroes, telling them not to be afraid, for the
+end of the world was not coming just yet.  But still the dust went
+on falling till the whole island, I am told, was covered an inch
+thick; and the same thing happened in the other islands round.
+People thought--and they had reason to think from what had often
+happened elsewhere--that though the dust might hurt the crops for
+that year, it would make them richer in years to come, because it
+would act as manure upon the soil; and so it did after a few
+years; but it did terrible damage at the time, breaking off the
+boughs of trees and covering up the crops; and in St. Vincent
+itself whole estates were ruined.  It was a frightful day, but I
+know well that behind that How there was a Why for its happening,
+and happening too, about that very time, which all who know the
+history of negro slavery in the West Indies can guess for
+themselves, and confess, I hope, that in this case, as in all
+others, when Lady Why seems most severe she is often most just and
+kind.
+
+Ah! my dear child, that I could go on talking to you of this for
+hours and days!  But I have time now only to teach you the
+alphabet of these matters--and, indeed, I know little more than
+the alphabet myself; but if the very letters of Madam How's book,
+and the mere A, B, AB, of it, which I am trying to teach you, are
+so wonderful and so beautiful, what must its sentences be and its
+chapters?  And what must the whole book be like?  But that last
+none can read save He who wrote it before the worlds were made.
+
+But now I see you want to ask a question.  Let us have it out.  I
+would sooner answer one question of yours than tell you ten things
+without your asking.
+
+Is there potash and magnesia and silicates in the soil here?  And
+if there is, where did they come from?  For there are no volcanos
+in England.
+
+Yes.  There are such things in the soil; and little enough of
+them, as the farmers here know too well.  For we here, in Windsor
+Forest, are on the very poorest and almost the newest soil in
+England; and when Madam How had used up all her good materials in
+making the rest of the island, she carted away her dry rubbish and
+shot it down here for us to make the best of; and I do not think
+that we and our forefathers have done so very ill with it.  But
+where the rich part, or staple, of our soils came from first it
+would be very difficult to say, so often has Madam How made, and
+unmade, and re-made England, and sifted her materials afresh every
+time.  But if you go to the Lowlands of Scotland, you may soon see
+where the staple of the soil came from there, and that I was right
+in saying that there were atoms of lava in every Scotch boy's
+broth.  Not that there were ever (as far as I know) volcanos in
+Scotland or in England.  Madam How has more than one string to her
+bow, or two strings either; so when she pours out her lavas, she
+does not always pour them out in the open air.  Sometimes she
+pours them out at the bottom of the sea, as she did in the north
+of Ireland and the south-west of Scotland, when she made the
+Giant's Causeway, and Fingal's Cave in Staffa too, at the bottom
+of the old chalk ocean, ages and ages since.  Sometimes she
+squirts them out between the layers of rock, or into cracks which
+the earthquakes have made, in what are called trap dykes, of which
+there are plenty to be seen in Scotland, and in Wales likewise.
+And then she lifts the earth up from the bottom of the sea, and
+sets the rain to wash away all the soft rocks, till the hard lava
+stands out in great hills upon the surface of the ground.  Then
+the rain begins eating away those lava-hills likewise, and
+manuring the earth with them; and wherever those lava-hills stand
+up, whether great or small, there is pretty sure to be rich land
+around them.  If you look at the Geological Map of England and
+Ireland, and the red spots upon it, which will show you where
+those old lavas are, you will see how much of them there is in
+England, at the Lizard Point in Cornwall, and how much more in
+Scotland and the north of Ireland.  In South Devon, in Shropshire-
+-with its beautiful Wrekin, and Caradoc, and Lawley--in Wales,
+round Snowdon (where some of the soil is very rich), and, above
+all, in the Lowlands of Scotland, you see these red marks, showing
+the old lavas, which are always fertile, except the poor old
+granite, which is of little use save to cut into building stone,
+because it is too full of quartz--that is, flint.
+
+Think of this the next time you go through Scotland in the
+railway, especially when you get near Edinburgh.  As you run
+through the Lothians, with their noble crops of corn, and roots,
+and grasses--and their great homesteads, each with its engine
+chimney, which makes steam do the work of men--you will see rising
+out of the plain, hills of dark rock, sometimes in single knobs,
+like Berwick Law or Stirling Crag--sometimes in noble ranges, like
+Arthur's Seat, or the Sidlaws, or the Ochils.  Think what these
+black bare lumps of whinstone are, and what they do.  Remember
+they are mines--not gold mines, but something richer still--food
+mines, which Madam How thrust into the inside of the earth, ages
+and ages since, as molten lava rock, and then cooled them and
+lifted them up, and pared them away with her ice-plough and her
+rain-spade, and spread the stuff of them over the wide carses
+round, to make in that bleak northern climate, which once carried
+nothing but fir-trees and heather, a soil fit to feed a great
+people; to cultivate in them industry, and science, and valiant
+self-dependence and self-help; and to gather round the Heart of
+Midlothian and the Castle Rock of Edinburgh the stoutest and the
+ablest little nation which Lady Why has made since she made the
+Greeks who fought at Salamis.
+
+Of those Greeks you have read, or ought to read, in Mr. Cox's
+Tales of the Persian War.  Some day you will read of them in their
+own books, written in their grand old tongue.  Remember that Lady
+Why made them, as she has made the Scotch, by first preparing a
+country for them, which would call out all their courage and their
+skill; and then by giving them the courage and the skill to make
+use of the land where she had put them.
+
+And now think what a wonderful fairy tale you might write for
+yourself--and every word of it true--of the adventures of one atom
+of Potash or some other Salt, no bigger than a needle's point, in
+such a lava stream as I have been telling of.  How it has run
+round and round, and will run round age after age, in an endless
+chain of change.  How it began by being molten fire underground,
+how then it became part of a hard cold rock, lifted up into a
+cliff, beaten upon by rain and storm, and washed down into the
+soil of the plain, till, perhaps, the little atom of mineral met
+with the rootlet of some great tree, and was taken up into its sap
+in spring, through tiny veins, and hardened the next year into a
+piece of solid wood.  And then how that tree was cut down, and its
+logs, it may be, burnt upon the hearth, till the little atom of
+mineral lay among the wood-ashes, and was shovelled out and thrown
+upon the field and washed into the soil again, and taken up by the
+roots of a clover plant, and became an atom of vegetable matter
+once more.  And then how, perhaps, a rabbit came by, and ate the
+clover, and the grain of mineral became part of the rabbit; and
+then how a hawk killed that rabbit, and ate it, and so the grain
+became part of the hawk; and how the farmer shot the hawk, and it
+fell perchance into a stream, and was carried down into the sea;
+and when its body decayed, the little grain sank through the
+water, and was mingled with the mud at the bottom of the sea.  But
+do its wanderings stop there?  Not so, my child.  Nothing upon
+this earth, as I told you once before, continues in one stay.
+That grain of mineral might stay at the bottom of the sea a
+thousand or ten thousand years, and yet the time would come when
+Madam How would set to work on it again.  Slowly, perhaps, she
+would sink that mud so deep, and cover it up with so many fresh
+beds of mud, or sand, or lime, that under the heavy weight, and
+perhaps, too, under the heat of the inside of the earth, that Mud
+would slowly change to hard Slate Rock; and ages after, it may be,
+Madam How might melt that Slate Rock once more, and blast it out;
+and then through the mouth of a volcano the little grain of
+mineral might rise into the open air again to make fresh soil, as
+it had done thousands of years before.  For Madam How can
+manufacture many different things out of the same materials.  She
+may have so wrought with that grain of mineral, that she may have
+formed it into part of a precious stone, and men may dig it out of
+the rock, or pick it up in the river-bed, and polish it, and set
+it, and wear it.  Think of that--that in the jewels which your
+mother or your sisters wear, or in your father's signet ring,
+there may be atoms which were part of a live plant, or a live
+animal, millions of years ago, and may be parts of a live plant or
+a live animal millions of years hence.
+
+Think over again, and learn by heart, the links of this endless
+chain of change:  Fire turned into Stone--Stone into Soil--Soil
+into Plant--Plant into Animal--Animal into Soil--Soil into Stone--
+Stone into Fire again--and then Fire into Stone again, and the old
+thing run round once more.
+
+So it is, and so it must be.  For all things which are born in
+Time must change in Time, and die in Time, till that Last Day of
+this our little earth, in which,
+
+
+"Like to the baseless fabric of a vision,
+The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
+The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
+Yea, all things which inherit, shall dissolve,
+And, like an unsubstantial pageant faded,
+Leave not a rack behind."
+
+
+So all things change and die, and so your body too must change and
+die--but not yourself.  Madam How made your body; and she must
+unmake it again, as she unmakes all her works in Time and Space;
+but you, child, your Soul, and Life, and Self, she did not make;
+and over you she has no power.  For you were not, like your body,
+created in Time and Space; and you will endure though Time and
+Space should be no more:  because you are the child of the Living
+God, who gives to each thing its own body, and can give you
+another body, even as seems good to Him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--THE ICE-PLOUGH
+
+
+
+You want to know why I am so fond of that little bit of limestone,
+no bigger than my hand, which lies upon the shelf; why I ponder
+over it so often, and show it to all sensible people who come to
+see me?
+
+I do so, not only for the sake of the person who gave it to me,
+but because there is written on it a letter out of Madam How's
+alphabet, which has taken wise men many a year to decipher.  I
+could not decipher that letter when first I saw the stone.  More
+shame for me, for I had seen it often before, and understood it
+well enough, in many another page of Madam How's great book.  Take
+the stone, and see if you can find out anything strange about it.
+
+Well, it is only a bit of marble as big as my hand, that looks as
+if it had been, and really has been, broken off by a hammer.  But
+when you look again, you see there is a smooth scraped part on one
+edge, that seems to have been rubbed against a stone.
+
+Now look at that rubbed part, and tell me how it was done.
+
+You have seen men often polish one stone on another, or scour
+floors with a Bath brick, and you will guess at first that this
+was polished so:  but if it had been, then the rubbed place would
+have been flat:  but if you put your fingers over it, you will
+find that it is not flat.  It is rolled, fluted, channelled, so
+that the thing or things which rubbed it must have been somewhat
+round.  And it is covered, too, with very fine and smooth
+scratches or grooves, all running over the whole in the same line.
+Now what could have done that?
+
+Of course a man could have done it, if he had taken a large round
+stone in his hand, and worked the large channellings with that,
+and then had taken fine sand and gravel upon the points of his
+fingers, and worked the small scratches with that.  But this stone
+came from a place where man had, perhaps, never stood before,--ay,
+which, perhaps, had never seen the light of day before since the
+world was made; and as I happen to know that no man made the marks
+upon that stone, we must set to work and think again for some tool
+of Madam How's which may have made them.
+
+And now I think you must give up guessing, and I must tell you the
+answer to the riddle.  Those marks were made by a hand which is
+strong and yet gentle, tough and yet yielding, like the hand of a
+man; a hand which handles and uses in a grip stronger than a
+giant's its own carving tools, from the great boulder stone as
+large as this whole room to the finest grain of sand.  And that is
+ICE.
+
+That piece of stone came from the side of the Rosenlaui glacier in
+Switzerland, and it was polished by the glacier ice.  The glacier
+melted and shrank this last hot summer farther back than it had
+done for many years, and left bare sheets of rock, which it had
+been scraping at for ages, with all the marks fresh upon them.
+And that bit was broken off and brought to me, who never saw a
+glacier myself, to show me how the marks which the ice makes in
+Switzerland are exactly the same as those which the ice has made
+in Snowdon and in the Highlands, and many another place where I
+have traced them, and written a little, too, about them in years
+gone by.  And so I treasure this, as a sign that Madam How's ways
+do not change nor her laws become broken; that, as that great
+philosopher Sir Charles Lyell will tell you, when you read his
+books, Madam How is making and unmaking the surface of the earth
+now, by exactly the same means as she was making and unmaking ages
+and ages since; and that what is going on slowly and surely in the
+Alps in Switzerland was going on once here where we stand.
+
+It is very difficult, I know, for a little boy like you to
+understand how ice, and much more how soft snow, should have such
+strength that it can grind this little stone, much more such
+strength as to grind whole mountains into plains.  You have never
+seen ice and snow do harm.  You cannot even recollect the Crimean
+Winter, as it was called then; and well for you you cannot,
+considering all the misery it brought at home and abroad.  You
+cannot, I say, recollect the Crimean Winter, when the Thames was
+frozen over above the bridges, and the ice piled in little bergs
+ten to fifteen feet high, which lay, some of them, stranded on the
+shores, about London itself, and did not melt, if I recollect,
+until the end of May.  You never stood, as I stood, in the great
+winter of 1837-8 on Battersea Bridge, to see the ice break up with
+the tide, and saw the great slabs and blocks leaping and piling
+upon each other's backs, and felt the bridge tremble with their
+shocks, and listened to their horrible grind and roar, till one
+got some little picture in one's mind of what must be the breaking
+up of an ice-floe in the Arctic regions, and what must be the
+danger of a ship nipped in the ice and lifted up on high, like
+those in the pictures of Arctic voyages which you are so fond of
+looking through.  You cannot recollect how that winter even in our
+little Blackwater Brook the alder stems were all peeled white, and
+scarred, as if they had been gnawed by hares and deer, simply by
+the rushing and scraping of the ice,--a sight which gave me again
+a little picture of the destruction which the ice makes of quays,
+and stages, and houses along the shore upon the coasts of North
+America, when suddenly setting in with wind and tide, it jams and
+piles up high inland, as you may read for yourself some day in a
+delightful book called Frost and Fire.  You recollect none of
+these things.  Ice and snow are to you mere playthings; and you
+long for winter, that you may make snowballs and play hockey and
+skate upon the ponds, and eat ice like a foolish boy till you make
+your stomach ache.  And I dare say you have said, like many
+another boy, on a bright cheery ringing frosty day, "Oh, that it
+would be always winter!"  You little knew for what you asked.  You
+little thought what the earth would soon be like, if it were
+always winter,--if one sheet of ice on the pond glued itself on to
+the bottom of the last sheet, till the whole pond was a solid
+mass,--if one snow-fall lay upon the top of another snow-fall till
+the moor was covered many feet deep and the snow began sliding
+slowly down the glen from Coombs's, burying the green fields,
+tearing the trees up by their roots, burying gradually house,
+church, and village, and making this place for a few thousand
+years what it was many thousand years ago.  Good-bye then, after a
+very few winters, to bees, and butterflies, and singing-birds, and
+flowers; and good-bye to all vegetables, and fruit, and bread;
+good-bye to cotton and woollen clothes.  You would have, if you
+were left alive, to dress in skins, and eat fish and seals, if any
+came near enough to be caught.  You would have to live in a word,
+if you could live at all, as Esquimaux live now in Arctic regions,
+and as people had to live in England ages since, in the times when
+it was always winter, and icebergs floated between here and
+Finchampstead.  Oh no, my child:  thank Heaven that it is not
+always winter; and remember that winter ice and snow, though it is
+a very good tool with which to make the land, must leave the land
+year by year if that land is to be fit to live in.
+
+I said that if the snow piled high enough upon the moor, it would
+come down the glen in a few years through Coombs's Wood; and I
+said then you would have a small glacier here--such a glacier (to
+compare small things with great) as now comes down so many valleys
+in the Alps, or has come down all the valleys of Greenland and
+Spitzbergen till they reach the sea, and there end as cliffs of
+ice, from which great icebergs snap off continually, and fall and
+float away, wandering southward into the Atlantic for many a
+hundred miles.  You have seen drawings of such glaciers in Captain
+Cook's Voyages; and you may see photographs of Swiss glaciers in
+any good London print-shop; and therefore you have seen almost as
+much about them as I have seen, and may judge for yourself how you
+would like to live where it is always winter.
+
+Now you must not ask me to tell you what a glacier is like, for I
+have never seen one; at least, those which I have seen were more
+than fifty miles away, looking like white clouds hanging on the
+gray mountain sides.  And it would be an impertinence--that means
+a meddling with things which I have no business--to picture to you
+glaciers which have been pictured so well and often by gentlemen
+who escape every year from their hard work in town to find among
+the glaciers of the Alps health and refreshment, and sound
+knowledge, and that most wholesome and strengthening of all
+medicines, toil.
+
+So you must read of them in such books as Peaks, Passes, and
+Glaciers, and Mr. Willes's Wanderings in the High Alps, and
+Professor Tyndall's different works; or you must look at them (as
+I just now said) in photographs or in pictures.  But when you do
+that, or when you see a glacier for yourself, you must bear in
+mind what a glacier means--that it is a river of ice, fed by a
+lake of snow.  The lake from which it springs is the eternal snow-
+field which stretches for miles and miles along the mountain tops,
+fed continually by fresh snow-storms falling from the sky.  That
+snow slides off into the valleys hour by hour, and as it rushes
+down is ground and pounded, and thawed and frozen again into a
+sticky paste of ice, which flows slowly but surely till it reaches
+the warm valley at the mountain foot, and there melts bit by bit.
+The long black lines which you see winding along the white and
+green ice of the glacier are the stones which have fallen from the
+cliffs above.  They will be dropped at the end of the glacier, and
+mixed with silt and sand and other stones which have come down
+inside the glacier itself, and piled up in the field in great
+mounds, which are called moraines, such as you may see and walk on
+in Scotland many a time, though you might never guess what they
+are.
+
+The river which runs out at the glacier foot is, you must
+remember, all foul and milky with the finest mud; and that mud is
+the grinding of the rocks over which the glacier has been crawling
+down, and scraping them as it scraped my bit of stone with pebbles
+and with sand.  And this is the alphabet, which, if you learn by
+heart, you will learn to understand how Madam How uses her great
+ice-plough to plough down her old mountains, and spread the stuff
+of them about the valleys to make rich straths of fertile soil.
+Nay, so immensely strong, because immensely heavy, is the share of
+this her great ice-plough, that some will tell you (and it is not
+for me to say that they are wrong) that with it she has ploughed
+out all the mountain lakes in Europe and in North America; that
+such lakes, for instance, as Ullswater or Windermere have been
+scooped clean out of the solid rock by ice which came down these
+glaciers in old times.  And be sure of this, that next to Madam
+How's steam-pump and her rain-spade, her great ice-plough has had,
+and has still, the most to do with making the ground on which we
+live.
+
+Do I mean that there were ever glaciers here?  No, I do not.
+There have been glaciers in Scotland in plenty.  And if any Scotch
+boy shall read this book, it will tell him presently how to find
+the marks of them far and wide over his native land.  But as you,
+my child, care most about this country in which you live, I will
+show you in any gravel-pit, or hollow lane upon the moor, the
+marks, not of a glacier, which is an ice-river, but of a whole sea
+of ice.
+
+Let us come up to the pit upon the top of the hill, and look
+carefully at what we see there.  The lower part of the pit of
+course is a solid rock of sand.  On the top of that is a cap of
+gravel, five, six, ten feet thick.  Now the sand was laid down
+there by water at the bottom of an old sea; and therefore the top
+of it would naturally be flat and smooth, as the sands at
+Hunstanton or at Bournemouth are; and the gravel, if it was laid
+down by water, would naturally lie flat on it again:  but it does
+not.  See how the top of the sand is dug out into deep waves and
+pits, filled up with gravel.  And see, too, how over some of the
+gravel you get sand again, and then gravel again, and then sand
+again, till you cannot tell where one fairly begins and the other
+ends.  Why, here are little dots of gravel, six or eight feet
+down, in what looks the solid sand rock, yet the sand must have
+been opened somehow to put the gravel in.
+
+You say you have seen that before.  You have seen the same curious
+twisting of the gravel and sand into each other on the top of
+Farley Hill, and in the new cutting on Minley Hill; and, best of
+all, in the railway cutting between Ascot and Sunningdale, where
+upon the top the white sand and gravel is arranged in red and
+brown waves, and festoons, and curlicues, almost like Prince of
+Wales's feathers.  Yes, that last is a beautiful section of ice-
+work; so beautiful, that I hope to have it photographed some day.
+
+Now, how did ice do this?
+
+Well, I was many a year before I found out that, and I dare say I
+never should have found it out for myself.  A gentleman named
+Trimmer, who, alas! is now dead, was, I believe, the first to find
+it out.  He knew that along the coast of Labrador, and other cold
+parts of North America, and on the shores, too, of the great river
+St. Lawrence, the stranded icebergs, and the ice-foot, as it is
+called, which is continually forming along the freezing shores,
+grub and plough every tide into the mud and sand, and shove up
+before them, like a ploughshare, heaps of dirt; and that, too, the
+ice itself is full of dirt, of sand and stones, which it may have
+brought from hundreds of miles away; and that, as this ploughshare
+of dirty ice grubs onward, the nose of the plough is continually
+being broken off, and left underneath the mud; and that, when
+summer comes, and the ice melts, the mud falls back into the place
+where the ice had been, and covers up the gravel which was in the
+ice.  So, what between the grubbing of the ice-plough into the
+mud, and the dirt which it leaves behind when it melts, the
+stones, and sand, and mud upon the shore are jumbled up into
+curious curved and twisted layers, exactly like those which Mr.
+Trimmer saw in certain gravel-pits.  And when I first read about
+that, I said, "And exactly like what I have been seeing in every
+gravel-pit round here, and trying to guess how they could have
+been made by currents of water, and yet never could make any guess
+which would do."  But after that it was all explained to me; and I
+said, "Honour to the man who has let Madam How teach him what she
+had been trying to teach me for fifteen years, while I was too
+stupid to learn it.  Now I am certain, as certain as I can be of
+any earthly thing, that the whole of these Windsor Forest Flats
+were ages ago ploughed and harrowed over and over again, by ice-
+floes and icebergs drifting and stranding in a shallow sea."
+
+And if you say, my dear child, as some people will say, that it is
+like building a large house upon a single brick to be sure that
+there was an iceberg sea here, just because I see a few curlicues
+in the gravel and sand--then I must tell you that there are
+sometimes--not often, but sometimes--pages in Madam How's book in
+which one single letter tells you as much as a whole chapter; in
+which if you find one little fact, and know what it really means,
+it makes you certain that a thousand other great facts have
+happened.  You may be astonished:  but you cannot deny your own
+eyes, and your own common sense.  You feel like Robinson Crusoe
+when, walking along the shore of his desert island, he saw for the
+first time the print of a man's foot in the sand.  How it could
+have got there without a miracle he could not dream.  But there it
+was.  One footprint was as good as the footprints of a whole army
+would have been.  A man had been there; and more men might come.
+And in fear of the savages--and if you have read Robinson Crusoe
+you know how just his fears were--he went home trembling and
+loaded his muskets, and barricaded his cave, and passed sleepless
+nights watching for the savages who might come, and who came after
+all.
+
+And so there are certain footprints in geology which there is no
+mistaking; and the prints of the ice-plough are among them.
+
+For instance:- When they were trenching the new plantation close
+to Wellington College station, the men turned up out of the ground
+a great many Sarsden stones; that is, pieces of hard sugary sand,
+such as Stonehenge is made of.  And when I saw these I said, "I
+suspect these were brought here by icebergs:" but I was not sure,
+and waited.  As the men dug on, they dug up a great many large
+flints, with bottle-green coats.  "Now," I said, "I am sure.  For
+I know where these flints must have come from."  And for reasons
+which would be too long to tell you here, I said, "Some time or
+other, icebergs have been floating northward from the Hog's Back
+over Aldershot and Farnborough, and have been trying to get into
+the Vale of Thames by the slope at Wellington College station; and
+they have stranded, and dropped these flints."  And I am so sure
+of that, that if I found myself out wrong after all I should be at
+my wit's end; for I should know that I was wrong about a hundred
+things besides.
+
+Or again, if you ever go up Deeside in Scotland, towards Balmoral,
+and turn up Glen Muick, towards Alt-na-guisach, of which you may
+see a picture in the Queen's last book, you will observe standing
+on your right hand, just above Birk Hall, three pretty rounded
+knolls, which they call the Coile Hills.  You may easily know them
+by their being covered with beautiful green grass instead of
+heather.  That is because they are made of serpentine or volcanic
+rock, which (as you have seen) often cuts into beautiful red and
+green marble; and which also carries a very rich soil because it
+is full of magnesia.  If you go up those hills, you get a glorious
+view--the mountains sweeping round you where you stand, up to the
+top of Lochnagar, with its bleak walls a thousand feet
+perpendicular, and gullies into which the sun never shines, and
+round to the dark fir forests of the Ballochbuie.  That is the arc
+of the bow; and the cord of the bow is the silver Dee, more than a
+thousand feet below you; and in the centre of the cord, where the
+arrow would be fitted in, stands Balmoral, with its Castle, and
+its Gardens, and its Park, and pleasant cottages and homesteads
+all around.  And when you have looked at the beautiful
+amphitheatre of forest at your feet, and looked too at the great
+mountains to the westward, and Benaun, and Benna-buird and Benna-
+muicdhui, with their bright patches of eternal snow, I should
+advise you to look at the rock on which you stand, and see what
+you see there.  And you will see that on the side of the Coiles
+towards Lochnagar, and between the knolls of them, are scattered
+streams, as it were, of great round boulder stones--which are not
+serpentine, but granite from the top of Lochnagar, five miles
+away.  And you will see that the knolls of serpentine rock, or at
+least their backs and shoulders towards Lochnagar, are all
+smoothed and polished till they are as round as the backs of
+sheep, "roches moutonnees," as the French call ice-polished rocks;
+and then, if you understand what that means, you will say, as I
+said, "I am perfectly certain that this great basin between me and
+Lochnagar, which is now 3000 feet deep of empty air was once
+filled up with ice to the height of the hills on which I stand--
+about 1700 feet high--and that that ice ran over into Glen Muick,
+between these pretty knolls, and covered the ground where Birk
+Hall now stands."
+
+And more:- When you see growing on those knolls of serpentine a
+few pretty little Alpine plants, which have no business down there
+so low, you will have a fair right to say, as I said, "The seeds
+of these plants were brought by the ice ages and ages since from
+off the mountain range of Lochnagar, and left here, nestling among
+the rocks, to found a fresh colony, far from their old mountain
+home."
+
+If I could take you with me up to Scotland,--take you, for
+instance, along the Tay, up the pass of Dunkeld, or up Strathmore
+towards Aberdeen, or up the Dee towards Braemar,--I could show you
+signs, which cannot be mistaken, of the time when Scotland was,
+just like Spitzbergen or like Greenland now, covered in one vast
+sheet of snow and ice from year's end to year's end; when glaciers
+were ploughing out its valleys, icebergs were breaking off the icy
+cliffs and floating out to sea; when not a bird, perhaps, was to
+be seen save sea-fowl, not a plant upon the rocks but a few
+lichens, and Alpine saxifrages, and such like--desolation and cold
+and lifeless everywhere.  That ice-time went on for ages and for
+ages; and yet it did not go on in vain.  Through it Madam How was
+ploughing down the mountains of Scotland to make all those rich
+farms which stretch from the north side of the Frith of Forth into
+Sutherlandshire.  I could show you everywhere the green banks and
+knolls of earth, which Scotch people call "kames" and "tomans"--
+perhaps brought down by ancient glaciers, or dropped by ancient
+icebergs--now so smooth and green through summer and through
+winter, among the wild heath and the rough peat-moss, that the old
+Scots fancied, and I dare say Scotch children fancy still, fairies
+dwelt inside.  If you laid your ear against the mounds, you might
+hear the fairy music, sweet and faint, beneath the ground.  If you
+watched the mound at night, you might see the fairies dancing the
+turf short and smooth, or riding out on fairy horses, with green
+silk clothes and jingling bells.  But if you fell asleep upon the
+mounds, the fairy queen came out and carried you for seven years
+into Fairyland, till you awoke again in the same place, to find
+all changed around you, and yourself grown thin and old.
+
+These are all dreams and fancies--untrue, not because they are too
+strange and wonderful, but because they are not strange and
+wonderful enough:  for more wonderful sure than any fairy tale it
+is, that Madam How should make a rich and pleasant land by the
+brute force of ice.
+
+And were there any men and women in that old age of ice?  That is
+a long story, and a dark one too; we will talk of it next time.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--THE TRUE FAIRY TALE
+
+
+
+You asked if there were men in England when the country was
+covered with ice and snow.  Look at this, and judge for yourself.
+
+What is it? a piece of old mortar?  Yes.  But mortar which was
+made Madam How herself, and not by any man.  And what is in it?  A
+piece of flint and some bits of bone.  But look at that piece of
+flint.  It is narrow, thin, sharp-edged:  quite different in shape
+from any bit of flint which you or I ever saw among the hundreds
+of thousands of broken bits of gravel which we tread on here all
+day long; and here are some more bits like it, which came from the
+same place--all very much the same shape, like rough knives or
+razor blades; and here is a core of flint, the remaining part of a
+large flint, from which, as you may see, blades like those have
+been split off.  Those flakes of flint, my child, were split off
+by men; even your young eyes ought to be able to see that.  And
+here are other pieces of flint--pear-shaped, but flattened, sharp
+at one end and left rounded at the other, which look like spear-
+heads, or arrow-heads, or pointed axes, or pointed hatchets--even
+your young eyes can see that these must have been made by man.
+And they are, I may tell you, just like the tools of flint, or of
+obsidian, which is volcanic glass, and which savages use still
+where they have not iron.  There is a great obsidian knife, you
+know, in a house in this very parish, which came from Mexico; and
+your eye can tell you how like it is to these flint ones.  But
+these flint tools are very old.  If you crack a fresh flint, you
+will see that its surface is gray, and somewhat rough, so that it
+sticks to your tongue.  These tools are smooth and shiny:  and the
+edges of some of them are a little rubbed from being washed about
+in gravel; while the iron in the gravel has stained them reddish,
+which it would take hundreds and perhaps thousands of years to do.
+There are little rough markings, too, upon some of them, which, if
+you look at through a magnifying glass, are iron, crystallised
+into the shape of little seaweeds and trees--another sign that
+they are very very old.  And what is more, near the place where
+these flint flakes come from there are no flints in the ground for
+hundreds of miles; so that men must have brought them there ages
+and ages since.  And to tell you plainly, these are scrapers such
+as the Esquimaux in North America still use to scrape the flesh
+off bones, and to clean the insides of skins.
+
+But did these people (savages perhaps) live when the country was
+icy cold?  Look at the bits of bone.  They have been split, you
+see, lengthways; that, I suppose, was to suck the marrow out of
+them, as savages do still.  But to what animal do the bones
+belong?  That is the question, and one which I could not have
+answered you, if wiser men than I am could not have told me.
+
+They are the bones of reindeer--such reindeer as are now found
+only in Lapland and the half-frozen parts of North America, close
+to the Arctic circle, where they have six months day and six
+months night.  You have read of Laplanders, and how they drive
+reindeer in their sledges, and live upon reindeer milk; and you
+have read of Esquimaux, who hunt seals and walrus, and live in
+houses of ice, lighted by lamps fed with the same blubber on which
+they feed themselves.  I need not tell you about them.
+
+Now comes the question--Whence did these flints and bones come?
+They came out of a cave in Dordogne, in the heart of sunny
+France,--far away to the south, where it is hotter every summer
+than it was here even this summer, from among woods of box and
+evergreen oak, and vineyards of rich red wine.  In that warm land
+once lived savages, who hunted amid ice and snow the reindeer, and
+with the reindeer animals stranger still.
+
+And now I will tell you a fairy tale:  to make you understand it
+at all I must put it in the shape of a tale.  I call it a fairy
+tale, because it is so strange; indeed I think I ought to call it
+the fairy tale of all fairy tales, for by the time we get to the
+end of it I think it will explain to you how our forefathers got
+to believe in fairies, and trolls, and elves, and scratlings, and
+all strange little people who were said to haunt the mountains and
+the caves.
+
+Well, once upon a time, so long ago that no man can tell when, the
+land was so much higher, that between England and Ireland, and,
+what is more, between England and Norway, was firm dry land.  The
+country then must have looked--at least we know it looked so in
+Norfolk--very like what our moors look like here.  There were
+forests of Scotch fir, and of spruce too, which is not wild in
+England now, though you may see plenty in every plantation.  There
+were oaks and alders, yews and sloes, just as there are in our
+woods now.  There was buck-bean in the bogs, as there is in
+Larmer's and Heath pond; and white and yellow water-lilies, horn-
+wort, and pond-weeds, just as there are now in our ponds.  There
+were wild horses, wild deer, and wild oxen, those last of an
+enormous size.  There were little yellow roe-deer, which will not
+surprise you, for there are hundreds and thousands in Scotland to
+this day; and, as you know, they will thrive well enough in our
+woods now.  There were beavers too:  but that must not surprise
+you, for there were beavers in South Wales long after the Norman
+Conquest, and there are beavers still in the mountain glens of the
+south-east of France.  There were honest little water-rats too,
+who I dare say sat up on their hind legs like monkeys, nibbling
+the water-lily pods, thousands of years ago, as they do in our
+ponds now.  Well, so far we have come to nothing strange:  but now
+begins the fairy tale.  Mixed with all these animals, there
+wandered about great herds of elephants and rhinoceroses; not
+smooth-skinned, mind, but covered with hair and wool, like those
+which are still found sticking out of the everlasting ice cliffs,
+at the mouth of the Lena and other Siberian rivers, with the
+flesh, and skin, and hair so fresh upon them, that the wild wolves
+tear it off, and snarl and growl over the carcase of monsters who
+were frozen up thousands of years ago.  And with them, stranger
+still, were great hippopotamuses; who came, perhaps, northward in
+summer time along the sea-shore and down the rivers, having spread
+hither all the way from Africa; for in those days, you must
+understand, Sicily, and Italy, and Malta--look at your map--were
+joined to the coast of Africa:  and so it may be was the rock of
+Gibraltar itself; and over the sea where the Straits of Gibraltar
+now flow was firm dry land, over which hyaenas and leopards,
+elephants and rhinoceroses ranged into Spain; for their bones are
+found at this day in the Gibraltar caves.  And this is the first
+chapter of my fairy tale.
+
+Now while all this was going on, and perhaps before this began,
+the climate was getting colder year by year--we do not know how;
+and, what is more, the land was sinking; and it sank so deep that
+at last nothing was left out of the water but the tops of the
+mountains in Ireland, and Scotland, and Wales.  It sank so deep
+that it left beds of shells belonging to the Arctic regions nearly
+two thousand feet high upon the mountain side.  And so
+
+
+"It grew wondrous cold,
+And ice mast-high came floating by,
+As green as emerald."
+
+
+But there were no masts then to measure the icebergs by, nor any
+ship nor human being there.  All we know is that the icebergs
+brought with them vast quantities of mud, which sank to the
+bottom, and covered up that pleasant old forest-land in what is
+called boulder-clay; clay full of bits of broken rock, and of
+blocks of stone so enormous, that nothing but an iceberg could
+have carried them.  So all the animals were drowned or driven
+away, and nothing was left alive perhaps, except a few little
+hardy plants which clung about cracks and gullies in the mountain
+tops; and whose descendants live there still.  That was a dreadful
+time; the worst, perhaps, of all the age of Ice; and so ends the
+second chapter of my fairy tale.
+
+Now for my third chapter.  "When things come to the worst," says
+the proverb, "they commonly mend;" and so did this poor frozen and
+drowned land of England and France and Germany, though it mended
+very slowly.  The land began to rise out of the sea once more, and
+rose till it was perhaps as high as it had been at first, and
+hundreds of feet higher than it is now:  but still it was very
+cold, covered, in Scotland at least, with one great sea of ice and
+glaciers descending down into the sea, as I said when I spoke to
+you about the Ice-Plough.  But as the land rose, and grew warmer
+too, while it rose, the wild beasts who had been driven out by the
+great drowning came gradually back again.  As the bottom of the
+old icy sea turned into dry land, and got covered with grasses,
+and weeds, and shrubs once more, elephants, rhinoceroses,
+hippopotamuses, oxen--sometimes the same species, sometimes
+slightly different ones--returned to France, and then to England
+(for there was no British Channel then to stop them); and with
+them came other strange animals, especially the great Irish elk,
+as he is called, as large as the largest horse, with horns
+sometimes ten feet across.  A pair of those horns with the skull
+you have seen yourself, and can judge what a noble animal he must
+have been.  Enormous bears came too, and hyaenas, and a tiger or
+lion (I cannot say which), as large as the largest Bengal tiger
+now to be seen in India.
+
+And in those days--we cannot, of course, exactly say when--there
+came--first I suppose into the south and east of France, and then
+gradually onward into England and Scotland and Ireland--creatures
+without any hair to keep them warm, or scales to defend them,
+without horns or tusks to fight with, or teeth to worry and bite;
+the weakest you would have thought of the beasts, and yet stronger
+than all the animals, because they were Men, with reasonable
+souls.  Whence they came we cannot tell, nor why; perhaps from
+mere hunting after food, and love of wandering and being
+independent and alone.  Perhaps they came into that icy land for
+fear of stronger and cleverer people than themselves; for we have
+no proof, my child, none at all, that they were the first men that
+trod this earth.  But be that as it may, they came; and so cunning
+were these savage men, and so brave likewise, though they had no
+iron among them, only flint and sharpened bones, yet they
+contrived to kill and eat the mammoths, and the giant oxen, and
+the wild horses, and the reindeer, and to hold their own against
+the hyaenas, and tigers, and bears, simply because they had wits,
+and the dumb animals had none.  And that is the strangest part to
+me of all my fairy tale.  For what a man's wits are, and why he
+has them, and therefore is able to invent and to improve, while
+even the cleverest ape has none, and therefore can invent and
+improve nothing, and therefore cannot better himself, but must
+remain from father to son, and father to son again, a stupid,
+pitiful, ridiculous ape, while men can go on civilising
+themselves, and growing richer and more comfortable, wiser and
+happier, year by year--how that comes to pass, I say, is to me a
+wonder and a prodigy and a miracle, stranger than all the most
+fantastic marvels you ever read in fairy tales.
+
+You may find the flint weapons which these old savages used buried
+in many a gravel-pit up and down France and the south of England;
+but you will find none here, for the gravel here was made (I am
+told) at the beginning of the ice-time, before the north of
+England sunk into the sea, and therefore long, long before men
+came into this land.  But most of their remains are found in caves
+which water has eaten out of the limestone rocks, like that famous
+cave of Kent's Hole at Torquay.  In it, and in many another cave,
+lie the bones of animals which the savages ate, and cracked to get
+the marrow out of them, mixed up with their flint-weapons and bone
+harpoons, and sometimes with burnt ashes and with round stones,
+used perhaps to heat water, as savages do now, all baked together
+into a hard paste or breccia by the lime.  These are in the water,
+and are often covered with a floor of stalagmite which has dripped
+from the roof above and hardened into stone.  Of these caves and
+their beautiful wonders I must tell you another day.  We must keep
+now to our fairy tale.  But in these caves, no doubt, the savages
+lived; for not only have weapons been found in them, but actually
+drawings scratched (I suppose with flint) on bone or mammoth
+ivory--drawings of elk, and bull, and horse, and ibex--and one,
+which was found in France, of the great mammoth himself, the
+woolly elephant, with a mane on his shoulders like a lion's mane.
+So you see that one of the earliest fancies of this strange
+creature, called man, was to draw, as you and your schoolfellows
+love to draw, and copy what you see, you know not why.  Remember
+that.  You like to draw; but why you like it neither you nor any
+man can tell.  It is one of the mysteries of human nature; and
+that poor savage clothed in skins, dirty it may be, and more
+ignorant than you (happily) can conceive, when he sat scratching
+on ivory in the cave the figures of the animals he hunted, was
+proving thereby that he had the same wonderful and mysterious
+human nature as you--that he was the kinsman of every painter and
+sculptor who ever felt it a delight and duty to copy the beautiful
+works of God.
+
+Sometimes, again, especially in Denmark, these savages have left
+behind upon the shore mounds of dirt, which are called there
+"kjokken-moddings"--"kitchen-middens" as they would say in
+Scotland, "kitchen-dirtheaps" as we should say here down South--
+and a very good name for them that is; for they are made up of the
+shells of oysters, cockles, mussels, and periwinkles, and other
+shore-shells besides, on which those poor creatures fed; and
+mingled with them are broken bones of beasts, and fishes, and
+birds, and flint knives, and axes, and sling stones; and here and
+there hearths, on which they have cooked their meals in some rough
+way.  And that is nearly all we know about them; but this we know
+from the size of certain of the shells, and from other reasons
+which you would not understand, that these mounds were made an
+enormous time ago, when the water of the Baltic Sea was far more
+salt than it is now.
+
+But what has all this to do with my fairy tale?  This:-
+
+Suppose that these people, after all, had been fairies?
+
+I am in earnest.  Of course, I do not mean that these folk could
+make themselves invisible, or that they had any supernatural
+powers--any more, at least, than you and I have--or that they were
+anything but savages; but this I do think, that out of old stories
+of these savages grew up the stories of fairies, elves, and
+trolls, and scratlings, and cluricaunes, and ogres, of which you
+have read so many.
+
+When stronger and bolder people, like the Irish, and the
+Highlanders of Scotland, and the Gauls of France, came northward
+with their bronze and iron weapons; and still more, when our own
+forefathers, the Germans and the Norsemen, came, these poor little
+savages with their flint arrows and axes, were no match for them,
+and had to run away northward, or to be all killed out; for people
+were fierce and cruel in those old times, and looked on every one
+of a different race from themselves as a natural enemy.  They had
+not learnt--alas! too many have not learned it yet--that all men
+are brothers for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.  So these poor
+savages were driven out, till none were left, save the little
+Lapps up in the north of Norway, where they live to this day.
+
+But stories of them, and of how they dwelt in caves, and had
+strange customs, and used poisoned weapons, and how the elf-bolts
+(as their flint arrow-heads are still called) belonged to them,
+lingered on, and were told round the fire on winter nights and
+added to, and played with half in fun, till a hundred legends
+sprang up about them, which used once to be believed by grown-up
+folk, but which now only amuse children.  And because some of
+these savages were very short, as the Lapps and Esquimaux are now,
+the story grew of their being so small that they could make
+themselves invisible; and because others of them were (but
+probably only a few) very tall and terrible, the story grew that
+there were giants in that old world, like that famous Gogmagog,
+whom Brutus and his Britons met (so old fables tell), when they
+landed first at Plymouth, and fought him, and threw him over the
+cliff.  Ogres, too--of whom you read in fairy tales--I am afraid
+that there were such people once, even here in Europe; strong and
+terrible savages, who ate human beings.  Of course, the legends
+and tales about them became ridiculous and exaggerated as they
+passed from mouth to mouth over the Christmas fire, in the days
+when no one could read or write.  But that the tales began by
+being true any one may well believe who knows how many cannibal
+savages there are in the world even now.  I think that, if ever
+there was an ogre in the world, he must have been very like a
+certain person who lived, or was buried, in a cave in the
+Neanderthal, between Elberfeld and Dusseldorf, on the Lower Rhine.
+The skull and bones which were found there (and which are very
+famous now among scientific men) belonged to a personage whom I
+should have been very sorry to meet, and still more to let you
+meet, in the wild forest; to a savage of enormous strength of limb
+(and I suppose of jaw) likewise
+
+
+"like an ape,
+With forehead villainous low,"
+
+
+who could have eaten you if he would; and (I fear) also would have
+eaten you if he could.  Such savages may have lingered (I believe,
+from the old ballads and romances, that they did linger) for a
+long time in lonely forests and mountain caves, till they were all
+killed out by warriors who wore mail-armour and carried steel
+sword, and battle-axe, and lance.
+
+But had these people any religion?
+
+My dear child, we cannot know, and need not know.  But we know
+this--that God beholds all the heathen.  He fashions the hearts of
+them, and understandeth all their works.  And we know also that He
+is just and good.  These poor folks were, I doubt not, happy
+enough in their way; and we are bound to believe (for we have no
+proof against it), that most of them were honest and harmless
+enough likewise.  Of course, ogres and cannibals, and cruel and
+brutal persons (if there were any among them), deserved
+punishment--and punishment, I do not doubt, they got.  But, of
+course, again, none of them knew things which you know; but for
+that very reason they were not bound to do many things which you
+are bound to do.  For those to whom little is given, of them shall
+little be required.  What their religion was like, or whether they
+had any religion at all, we cannot tell.  But this we can tell,
+that known unto God are all His works from the creation of the
+world; and that His mercy is over all His works, and He hateth
+nothing that He has made.  These men and women, whatever they
+were, were God's work; and therefore we may comfort ourselves with
+the certainty that, whether or not they knew God, God knew them.
+
+And so ends my fairy tale.
+
+But is it not a wonderful tale?  More wonderful, if you will think
+over it, than any story invented by man.  But so it always is.
+"Truth," wise men tell us, "is stranger than fiction."  Even a
+child like you will see that it must be so, if you will but
+recollect who makes fiction, and who makes facts.
+
+Man makes fiction:  he invents stories, pretty enough, fantastical
+enough.  But out of what does he make them up?  Out of a few
+things in this great world which he has seen, and heard, and felt,
+just as he makes up his dreams.  But who makes truth?  Who makes
+facts?  Who, but God?
+
+Then truth is as much larger than fiction, as God is greater than
+man; as much larger as the whole universe is larger than the
+little corner of it that any man, even the greatest poet or
+philosopher, can see; and as much grander, and as much more
+beautiful, and as much more strange.  For one is the whole, and
+the other is one, a few tiny scraps of the whole.  The one is the
+work of God; the other is the work of man.  Be sure that no man
+can ever fancy anything strange, unexpected, and curious, without
+finding if he had eyes to see, a hundred things around his feet
+more strange, more unexpected, more curious, actually ready-made
+already by God.  You are fond of fairy tales, because they are
+fanciful, and like your dreams.  My dear child, as your eyes open
+to the true fairy tale which Madam How can tell you all day long,
+nursery stories will seem to you poor and dull.  All those
+feelings in you which your nursery tales call out,--imagination,
+wonder, awe, pity, and I trust too, hope and love--will be called
+out, I believe, by the Tale of all Tales, the true "Marchen allen
+Marchen," so much more fully and strongly and purely, that you
+will feel that novels and story-books are scarcely worth your
+reading, as long as you can read the great green book, of which
+every bud is a letter, and every tree a page.
+
+Wonder if you will.  You cannot wonder too much.  That you might
+wonder all your life long, God put you into this wondrous world,
+and gave you that faculty of wonder which he has not given to the
+brutes; which is at once the mother of sound science, and a pledge
+of immortality in a world more wondrous even than this.  But
+wonder at the right thing, not at the wrong; at the real miracles
+and prodigies, not at the sham.  Wonder not at the world of man.
+Waste not your admiration, interest, hope on it, its pretty toys,
+gay fashions, fine clothes, tawdry luxuries, silly amusements.
+Wonder at the works of God.  You will not, perhaps, take my advice
+yet.  The world of man looks so pretty, that you will needs have
+your peep at it, and stare into its shop windows; and if you can,
+go to a few of its stage plays, and dance at a few of its balls.
+Ah--well--After a wild dream comes an uneasy wakening; and after
+too many sweet things, comes a sick headache.  And one morning you
+will awake, I trust and pray, from the world of man to the world
+of God, and wonder where wonder is due, and worship where worship
+is due.  You will awake like a child who has been at a pantomime
+over night, staring at the "fairy halls," which are all paint and
+canvas; and the "dazzling splendours," which are gas and oil; and
+the "magic transformations," which are done with ropes and
+pulleys; and the "brilliant elves," who are poor little children
+out of the next foul alley; and the harlequin and clown, who
+through all their fun are thinking wearily over the old debts
+which they must pay, and the hungry mouths at home which they must
+feed:  and so, having thought it all wondrously glorious, and
+quite a fairy land, slips tired and stupid into bed, and wakes
+next morning to see the pure light shining in through the delicate
+frost-lace on the window-pane, and looks out over fields of virgin
+snow, and watches the rosy dawn and cloudless blue, and the great
+sun rising to the music of cawing rooks and piping stares, and
+says, "This is the true wonder.  This is the true glory.  The
+theatre last night was the fairy land of man; but this is the
+fairy land of God."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--THE CHALK-CARTS
+
+
+
+What do you want to know about next?  More about the caves in
+which the old savages lived,--how they were made, and how the
+curious things inside them got there, and so forth.
+
+Well, we will talk about that in good time:  but now--What is that
+coming down the hill?
+
+Oh, only some chalk-carts.
+
+Only some chalk-carts?  It seems to me that these chalk-carts are
+the very things we want; that if we follow them far enough--I do
+not mean with our feet along the public road, but with our
+thoughts along a road which, I am sorry to say, the public do not
+yet know much about--we shall come to a cave, and understand how a
+cave is made.  Meanwhile, do not be in a hurry to say, "Only a
+chalk-cart," or only a mouse, or only a dead leaf.  Chalk-carts,
+like mice, and dead leaves, and most other matters in the universe
+are very curious and odd things in the eyes of wise and reasonable
+people.  Whenever I hear young men saying "only" this and "only"
+that, I begin to suspect them of belonging, not to the noble army
+of sages--much less to the most noble army of martyrs,--but to the
+ignoble army of noodles, who think nothing interesting or
+important but dinners, and balls, and races, and back-biting their
+neighbours; and I should be sorry to see you enlisting in that
+regiment when you grow up.  But think--are not chalk-carts very
+odd and curious things?  I think they are.  To my mind, it is a
+curious question how men ever thought of inventing wheels; and,
+again, when they first thought of it.  It is a curious question,
+too, how men ever found out that they could make horses work for
+them, and so began to tame them, instead of eating them, and a
+curious question (which I think we shall never get answered) when
+the first horse-tamer lived, and in what country.  And a very
+curious, and, to me, a beautiful sight it is, to see those two
+noble horses obeying that little boy, whom they could kill with a
+single kick.
+
+But, beside all this, there is a question, which ought to be a
+curious one to you (for I suspect you cannot answer it)--Why does
+the farmer take the trouble to send his cart and horses eight
+miles and more, to draw in chalk from Odiham chalk-pit?
+
+Oh, he is going to put it on the land, of course.  They are
+chalking the bit at the top of the next field, where the copse was
+grubbed.
+
+But what good will he do by putting chalk on it?  Chalk is not
+rich and fertile, like manure, it is altogether poor, barren
+stuff:  you know that, or ought to know it.  Recollect the chalk
+cuttings and banks on the railway between Basingstoke and
+Winchester--how utterly barren they are.  Though they have been
+open these thirty years, not a blade of grass, hardly a bit of
+moss, has grown on them, or will grow, perhaps, for centuries.
+
+Come, let us find out something about the chalk before we talk
+about the caves.  The chalk is here, and the caves are not; and
+"Learn from the thing that lies nearest you" is as good a rule as
+"Do the duty which lies nearest you."  Let us come into the
+grubbed bit, and ask the farmer--there he is in his gig.
+
+Well, old friend, and how are you?  Here is a little boy who wants
+to know why you are putting chalk on your field.
+
+Does he then?  If he ever tries to farm round here, he will have
+to learn for his first rule--No chalk, no wheat.
+
+But why?
+
+Why, is more than I can tell, young squire.  But if you want to
+see how it comes about, look here at this freshly-grubbed land--
+how sour it is.  You can see that by the colour of it--some black,
+some red, some green, some yellow, all full of sour iron, which
+will let nothing grow.  After the chalk has been on it a year or
+two, those colours will have all gone out of it; and it will turn
+to a nice wholesome brown, like the rest of the field; and then
+you will know that the land is sweet, and fit for any crop.  Now
+do you mind what I tell you, and then I'll tell you something
+more.  We put on the chalk because, beside sweetening the land, it
+will hold water.  You see, the land about here, though it is often
+very wet from springs, is sandy and hungry; and when we drain the
+bottom water out of it, the top water (that is, the rain) is apt
+to run through it too fast:  and then it dries and burns up; and
+we get no plant of wheat, nor of turnips either.  So we put on
+chalk to hold water, and keep the ground moist.
+
+But how can these lumps of chalk hold water?  They are not made
+like cups.
+
+No:  but they are made like sponges, which serves our turn better
+still.  Just take up that lump, young squire, and you'll see water
+enough in it, or rather looking out of it, and staring you in the
+face.
+
+Why! one side of the lump is all over thick ice.
+
+So it is.  All that water was inside the chalk last night, till it
+froze.  And then it came squeezing out of the holes in the chalk
+in strings, as you may see it if you break the ice across.  Now
+you may judge for yourself how much water a load of chalk will
+hold, even on a dry summer's day.  And now, if you'll excuse me,
+sir, I must be off to market.
+
+Was it all true that the farmer said?
+
+Quite true, I believe.  He is not a scientific man--that is, he
+does not know the chemical causes of all these things; but his
+knowledge is sound and useful, because it comes from long
+experience.  He and his forefathers, perhaps for a thousand years
+and more, have been farming this country, reading Madam How's
+books with very keen eyes, experimenting and watching, very
+carefully and rationally; making mistakes often, and failing and
+losing their crops and their money; but learning from their
+mistakes, till their empiric knowledge, as it is called, helps
+them to grow sometimes quite as good crops as if they had learned
+agricultural chemistry.
+
+What he meant by the chalk sweetening the land you would not
+understand yet, and I can hardly tell you; for chemists are not
+yet agreed how it happens.  But he was right; and right, too, what
+he told you about the water inside the chalk, which is more
+important to us just now; for, if we follow it out, we shall
+surely come to a cave at last.
+
+So now for the water in the chalk.  You can see now why the chalk-
+downs at Winchester are always green, even in the hottest summer:
+because Madam How has put under them her great chalk sponge.  The
+winter rains soak into it; and the summer heat draws that rain out
+of it again as invisible steam, coming up from below, to keep the
+roots of the turf cool and moist under the blazing sun.
+
+You love that short turf well.  You love to run and race over the
+Downs with your butterfly-net and hunt "chalk-hill blues," and
+"marbled whites," and "spotted burnets," till you are hot and
+tired; and then to sit down and look at the quiet little old city
+below, with the long cathedral roof, and the tower of St. Cross,
+and the gray old walls and buildings shrouded by noble trees, all
+embosomed among the soft rounded lines of the chalk-hills; and
+then you begin to feel very thirsty, and cry, "Oh, if there were
+but springs and brooks in the Downs, as there are at home!"  But
+all the hollows are as dry as the hill tops.  There is not a
+brook, or the mark of a watercourse, in one of them.  You are like
+the Ancient Mariner in the poem, with
+
+
+"Water, water, every where,
+Nor any drop to drink."
+
+
+To get that you must go down and down, hundreds of feet, to the
+green meadows through which silver Itchen glides toward the sea.
+There you stand upon the bridge, and watch the trout in water so
+crystal-clear that you see every weed and pebble as if you looked
+through air.  If ever there was pure water, you think, that is
+pure.  Is it so?  Drink some.  Wash your hands in it and try--You
+feel that the water is rough, hard (as they call it), quite
+different from the water at home, which feels as soft as velvet.
+What makes it so hard?
+
+Because it is full of invisible chalk.  In every gallon of that
+water there are, perhaps, fifteen grains of solid chalk, which was
+once inside the heart of the hills above.  Day and night, year
+after year, the chalk goes down to the sea; and if there were such
+creatures as water-fairies--if it were true, as the old Greeks and
+Romans thought, that rivers were living things, with a Nymph who
+dwelt in each of them, and was its goddess or its queen--then, if
+your ears were opened to hear her, the Nymph of Itchen might say
+to you -
+
+So child, you think that I do nothing but, as your sister says
+when she sings Mr. Tennyson's beautiful song,
+
+
+"I chatter over stony ways,
+In little sharps and trebles,
+I bubble into eddying bays,
+I babble on the pebbles."
+
+
+Yes.  I do that:  and I love, as the Nymphs loved of old, men who
+have eyes to see my beauty, and ears to discern my song, and to
+fit their own song to it, and tell how
+
+
+"'I wind about, and in and out,
+With here a blossom sailing,
+And here and there a lusty trout,
+And here and there a grayling,
+
+"'And here and there a foamy flake
+Upon me, as I travel
+With many a silvery waterbreak
+Above the golden gravel,
+
+"'And draw them all along, and flow
+To join the brimming river,
+For men may come and men may go,
+But I go on for ever.'"
+
+
+Yes.  That is all true:  but if that were all, I should not be let
+to flow on for ever, in a world where Lady Why rules, and Madam
+How obeys.  I only exist (like everything else, from the sun in
+heaven to the gnat which dances in his beam) on condition of
+working, whether we wish it or not, whether we know it or not.  I
+am not an idle stream, only fit to chatter to those who bathe or
+fish in my waters, or even to give poets beautiful fancies about
+me.  You little guess the work I do.  For I am one of the
+daughters of Madam How, and, like her, work night and day, we know
+not why, though Lady Why must know.  So day by day, and night by
+night, while you are sleeping (for I never sleep), I carry,
+delicate and soft as I am, a burden which giants could not bear:
+and yet I am never tired.  Every drop of rain which the south-west
+wind brings from the West Indian seas gives me fresh life and
+strength to bear my burden; and it has need to do so; for every
+drop of rain lays a fresh burden on me.  Every root and weed which
+grows in every field; every dead leaf which falls in the highwoods
+of many a parish, from the Grange and Woodmancote round to
+Farleigh and Preston, and so to Brighton and the Alresford downs;-
+-ay, every atom of manure which the farmers put on the land--foul
+enough then, but pure enough before it touches me--each of these,
+giving off a tiny atom of what men call carbonic acid, melts a
+tiny grain of chalk, and helps to send it down through the solid
+hill by one of the million pores and veins which at once feed and
+burden my springs.  Ages on ages I have worked on thus, carrying
+the chalk into the sea.  And ages on ages, it may be, I shall work
+on yet; till I have done my work at last, and levelled the high
+downs into a flat sea-shore, with beds of flint gravel rattling in
+the shallow waves.
+
+She might tell you that; and when she had told you, you would
+surely think of the clumsy chalk-cart rumbling down the hill, and
+then of the graceful stream, bearing silently its invisible load
+of chalk; and see how much more delicate and beautiful, as well as
+vast and wonderful, Madam How's work is than that of man.
+
+But if you asked the nymph why she worked on for ever, she could
+not tell you.  For like the Nymphs of old, and the Hamadryads who
+lived, in trees, and Undine, and the little Sea-maiden, she would
+have no soul; no reason; no power to say why.
+
+It is for you, who are a reasonable being, to guess why:  or at
+least listen to me if I guess for you, and say, perhaps--I can
+only say perhaps--that chalk may be going to make layers of rich
+marl in the sea between England and France; and those marl-beds
+may be upheaved and grow into dry land, and be ploughed, and
+sowed, and reaped by a wiser race of men, in a better-ordered
+world than this:  or the chalk may have even a nobler destiny
+before it.  That may happen to it, which has happened already to
+many a grain of lime.  It may be carried thousands of miles away
+to help in building up a coral reef (what that is I must tell you
+afterwards).  That coral reef may harden into limestone beds.
+Those beds may be covered up, pressed, and, it may be, heated,
+till they crystallise into white marble:  and out of it fairer
+statues be carved, and grander temples built, than the world has
+ever yet seen.
+
+And if that is not the reason why the chalk is being sent into the
+sea, then there is another reason, and probably a far better one.
+For, as I told you at first, Lady Why's intentions are far wiser
+and better than our fancies; and she--like Him whom she obeys--is
+able to do exceeding abundantly, beyond all that we can ask or
+think.
+
+But you will say now that we have followed the chalk-cart a long
+way, without coming to the cave.
+
+You are wrong.  We have come to the very mouth of the cave.  All
+we have to do is to say--not "Open Sesame," like Ali Baba in the
+tale of the Forty Thieves--but some word or two which Madam Why
+will teach us, and forthwith a hill will open, and we shall walk
+in, and behold rivers and cascades underground, stalactite pillars
+and stalagmite statues, and all the wonders of the grottoes of
+Adelsberg, Antiparos, or Kentucky.
+
+Am I joking?  Yes, and yet no; for you know that when I joke I am
+usually most in earnest.  At least, I am now.
+
+But there are no caves in chalk?
+
+No, not that I ever heard of.  There are, though, in limestone,
+which is only a harder kind of chalk.  Madam How could turn this
+chalk into hard limestone, I believe, even now; and in more ways
+than one:  but in ways which would not be very comfortable or
+profitable for us Southern folk who live on it.  I am afraid that-
+-what between squeezing and heating--she would flatten us all out
+into phosphatic fossils, about an inch thick; and turn Winchester
+city into a "breccia" which would puzzle geologists a hundred
+thousand years hence.  So we will hope that she will leave our
+chalk downs for the Itchen to wash gently away, while we talk
+about caves, and how Madam How scoops them out by water
+underground, just in the same way, only more roughly, as she melts
+the chalk.
+
+Suppose, then, that these hills, instead of being soft, spongy
+chalk, were all hard limestone marble, like that of which the font
+in the church is made.  Then the rainwater, instead of sinking
+through the chalk as now, would run over the ground down-hill, and
+if it came to a crack (a fault, as it is called) it would run down
+between the rock; and as it ran it would eat that hole wider and
+wider year by year, and make a swallow-hole--such as you may see
+in plenty if you ever go up Whernside, or any of the high hills in
+Yorkshire--unfathomable pits in the green turf, in which you may
+hear the water tinkling and trickling far, far underground.
+
+And now, before we go a step farther, you may understand, why the
+bones of animals are so often found in limestone caves.  Down such
+swallow-holes how many beasts must fall:  either in hurry and
+fright, when hunted by lions and bears and such cruel beasts; or
+more often still in time of snow, when the holes are covered with
+drift; or, again, if they died on the open hill-sides, their bones
+might be washed in, in floods, along with mud and stones, and
+buried with them in the cave below; and beside that, lions and
+bears and hyaenas might live in the caves below, as we know they
+did in some caves, and drag in bones through the caves' mouths;
+or, again, savages might live in that cave, and bring in animals
+to eat, like the wild beasts; and so those bones might be mixed
+up, as we know they were, with things which the savages had left
+behind--like flint tools or beads; and then the whole would be
+hardened, by the dripping of the limestone water, into a paste of
+breccia just like this in my drawer.  But the bones of the savages
+themselves you would seldom or never find mixed in it--unless some
+one had fallen in by accident from above.  And why?  (For there is
+a Why? to that question:  and not merely a How?)  Simply because
+they were men; and because God has put into the hearts of all men,
+even of the lowest savages, some sort of reverence for those who
+are gone; and has taught them to bury, or in some other way take
+care of, their bones.
+
+But how is the swallow-hole sure to end in a cave?
+
+Because it cannot help making a cave for itself if it has time.
+
+Think:  and you will see that it must be so.  For that water must
+run somewhere; and so it eats its way out between the beds of the
+rock, making underground galleries, and at last caves and lofty
+halls.  For it always eats, remember, at the bottom of its
+channel, leaving the roof alone.  So it eats, and eats, more in
+some places and less in others, according as the stone is harder
+or softer, and according to the different direction of the rock-
+beds (what we call their dip and strike); till at last it makes
+one of those wonderful caverns about which you are so fond of
+reading--such a cave as there actually is in the rocks of the
+mountain of Whernside, fed by the swallow-holes around the
+mountain-top; a cave hundreds of yards long, with halls, and
+lakes, and waterfalls, and curtains and festoons of stalactite
+which have dripped from the roof, and pillars of stalagmite which
+have been built up on the floor below.  These stalactites (those
+tell me who have seen them) are among the most beautiful of all
+Madam How's work; sometimes like branches of roses or of grapes;
+sometimes like statues; sometimes like delicate curtains, and I
+know not what other beautiful shapes.  I have never seen them, I
+am sorry to say, and therefore I cannot describe them.  But they
+are all made in the same way; just in the same way as those little
+straight stalactites which you may have seen hanging, like
+icicles, in vaulted cellars, or under the arches of a bridge.  The
+water melts more lime than it can carry, and drops some of it
+again, making fresh limestone grain by grain as it drips from the
+roof above; and fresh limestone again where it splashes on the
+floor below:  till if it dripped long enough, the stalactite
+hanging from above would meet the stalagmite rising from below,
+and join in one straight round white graceful shaft, which would
+seem (but only seem) to support the roof of the cave.  And out of
+that cave--though not always out of the mouth of it--will run a
+stream of water, which seems to you clear as crystal, though it is
+actually, like the Itchen at Winchester, full of lime; so full of
+lime, that it makes beds of fresh limestone, which are called
+travertine--which you may see in Italy, and Greece, and Asia
+Minor:  or perhaps it petrifies, as you call it, the weeds in its
+bed, like that dropping-well at Knaresborough, of which you have
+often seen a picture.  And the cause is this:  the water is so
+full of lime, that it is forced to throw away some of it upon
+everything it touches, and so incrusts with stone--though it does
+not turn to stone--almost anything you put in it.  You have seen,
+or ought to have seen, petrified moss and birds' nests and such
+things from Knaresborough Well:  and now you know a little, though
+only a very little, of how the pretty toys are made.
+
+Now if you can imagine for yourself (though I suppose a little boy
+cannot) the amount of lime which one of these subterranean rivers
+would carry away, gnawing underground centuries after centuries,
+day and night, summer and winter, then you will not be surprised
+at the enormous size of caverns which may be seen in different
+parts of the world--but always, I believe, in limestone rock.  You
+would not be surprised (though you would admire them) at the
+caverns of Adelsberg, in Carniola (in the south of Austria, near
+the top of the Adriatic), which runs, I believe, for miles in
+length; and in the lakes of which, in darkness from its birth
+until its death, lives that strange beast, the Proteus a sort of
+long newt which never comes to perfection--I suppose for want of
+the genial sunlight which makes all things grow.  But he is blind;
+and more, he keeps all his life the same feathery gills which
+newts have when they are babies, and which we have so often looked
+at through the microscope, to see the blood-globules run round and
+round inside.  You would not wonder, either, at the Czirknitz
+Lake, near the same place, which at certain times of the year
+vanishes suddenly through chasms under water, sucking the fish
+down with it; and after a certain time boils suddenly up again
+from the depths, bringing back with it the fish, who have been
+swimming comfortably all the time in a subterranean lake; and
+bringing back, too (and, extraordinary as this story is, there is
+good reason to believe it true), live wild ducks who went down
+small and unfledged, and come back full-grown and fat, with water-
+weeds and small fish in their stomachs, showing they have had
+plenty to feed on underground.  But--and this is the strangest
+part of the story, if true--they come up unfledged just as they
+went down, and are moreover blind from having been so long in
+darkness.  After a while, however, folks say their eyes get right,
+their feathers grow, and they fly away like other birds.
+
+Neither would you be surprised (if you recollect that Madam How is
+a very old lady indeed, and that some of her work is very old
+likewise) at that Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, the largest cave in
+the known world, through which you may walk nearly ten miles on
+end, and in which a hundred miles of gallery have been explored
+already, and yet no end found to the cave.  In it (the guides will
+tell you) there are "226 avenues, 47 domes, 8 cataracts, 23 pits,
+and several rivers;" and if that fact is not very interesting to
+you (as it certainly is not to me) I will tell you something which
+ought to interest you:  that this cave is so immensely old that
+various kinds of little animals, who have settled themselves in
+the outer parts of it, have had time to change their shape, and to
+become quite blind; so that blind fathers and mothers have blind
+children, generation after generation.
+
+There are blind rats there, with large shining eyes which cannot
+see--blind landcrabs, who have the foot-stalks of their eyes (you
+may see them in any crab) still left; but the eyes which should be
+on the top of them are gone.  There are blind fish, too, in the
+cave, and blind insects; for, if they have no use for their eyes
+in the dark, why should Madam How take the trouble to finish them
+off?
+
+One more cave I must tell you of, to show you how old some caves
+must be, and then I must stop; and that is the cave of Caripe, in
+Venezuela, which is the most northerly part of South America.
+There, in the face of a limestone cliff, crested with enormous
+flowering trees, and festooned with those lovely creepers of which
+you have seen a few small ones in hothouses, there opens an arch
+as big as the west front of Winchester Cathedral, and runs
+straight in like a cathedral nave for more than 1400 feet.  Out of
+it runs a stream; and along the banks of that stream, as far as
+the sunlight strikes in, grow wild bananas, and palms, and lords
+and ladies (as you call them), which are not, like ours, one foot,
+but many feet high.  Beyond that the cave goes on, with
+subterranean streams, cascades, and halls, no man yet knows how
+far.  A friend of mine last year went in farther, I believe, than
+any one yet has gone; but, instead of taking Indian torches made
+of bark and resin, or even torches made of Spanish wax, such as a
+brave bishop of those parts used once when he went in farther than
+any one before him, he took with him some of that beautiful
+magnesium light which you have seen often here at home.  And in
+one place, when he lighted up the magnesium, he found himself in a
+hall full 300 feet high--higher far, that is, than the dome of St.
+Paul's--and a very solemn thought it was to him, he said, that he
+had seen what no other human being ever had seen; and that no ray
+of light had ever struck on that stupendous roof in all the ages
+since the making of the world.  But if he found out something
+which he did not expect, he was disappointed in something which he
+did expect.  For the Indians warned him of a hole in the floor
+which (they told him) was an unfathomable abyss.  And lo and
+behold, when he turned the magnesium light upon it, the said abyss
+was just about eight feet deep.  But it is no wonder that the poor
+Indians with their little smoky torches should make such mistakes;
+no wonder, too, that they should be afraid to enter far into those
+gloomy vaults; that they should believe that the souls of their
+ancestors live in that dark cave; and that they should say that
+when they die they will go to the Guacharos, as they call the
+birds that fly with doleful screams out of the cave to feed at
+night, and in again at daylight, to roost and sleep.
+
+Now, it is these very Guacharo birds which are to me the most
+wonderful part of the story.  The Indians kill and eat them for
+their fat, although they believe they have to do with evil
+spirits.  But scientific men who have studied these birds will
+tell you that they are more wonderful than if all the Indians'
+fancies about them were true.  They are great birds, more than
+three feet across the wings, somewhat like owls, somewhat like
+cuckoos, somewhat like goatsuckers; but, on the whole, unlike
+anything in the world but themselves; and instead of feeding on
+moths or mice, they feed upon hard dry fruits, which they pick off
+the trees after the set of sun.  And wise men will tell you, that
+in making such a bird as that, and giving it that peculiar way of
+life, and settling it in that cavern, and a few more caverns in
+that part of the world, and therefore in making the caverns ready
+for them to live in, Madam How must have taken ages and ages, more
+than you can imagine or count.
+
+But that is among the harder lessons which come in the latter part
+of Madam How's book.  Children need not learn them yet; and they
+can never learn them, unless they master her alphabet, and her
+short and easy lessons for beginners, some of which I am trying to
+teach you now.
+
+But I have just recollected that we are a couple of very stupid
+fellows.  We have been talking all this time about chalk and
+limestone, and have forgotten to settle what they are, and how
+they were made.  We must think of that next time.  It will not do
+for us (at least if we mean to be scientific men) to use terms
+without defining them; in plain English, to talk about--we don't
+know what.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--MADAM HOW'S TWO GRANDSONS
+
+
+
+You want to know, then, what chalk is?  I suppose you mean what
+chalk is made of?
+
+Yes.  That is it.
+
+That we can only help by calling in the help of a very great giant
+whose name is Analysis.
+
+A giant?
+
+Yes.  And before we call for him I will tell you a very curious
+story about him and his younger brother, which is every word of it
+true.
+
+Once upon a time, certainly as long ago as the first man, or
+perhaps the first rational being of any kind, was created, Madam
+How had two grandsons.  The elder is called Analysis, and the
+younger Synthesis.  As for who their father and mother were, there
+have been so many disputes on that question that I think children
+may leave it alone for the present.  For my part, I believe that
+they are both, like St. Patrick, "gentlemen, and come of decent
+people;" and I have a great respect and affection for them both,
+as long as each keeps in his own place and minds his own business.
+
+Now you must understand that, as soon as these two baby giants
+were born, Lady Why, who sets everything to do that work for which
+it is exactly fitted, set both of them their work.  Analysis was
+to take to pieces everything he found, and find out how it was
+made.  Synthesis was to put the pieces together again, and make
+something fresh out of them.  In a word, Analysis was to teach men
+Science; and Synthesis to teach them Art.
+
+But because Analysis was the elder, Madam How commanded Synthesis
+never to put the pieces together till Analysis had taken them
+completely apart.  And, my child, if Synthesis had obeyed that
+rule of his good old grandmother's, the world would have been far
+happier, wealthier, wiser, and better than it is now.
+
+But Synthesis would not.  He grew up a very noble boy.  He could
+carve, he could paint, he could build, he could make music, and
+write poems:  but he was full of conceit and haste.  Whenever his
+elder brother tried to do a little patient work in taking things
+to pieces, Synthesis snatched the work out of his hands before it
+was a quarter done, and began putting it together again to suit
+his own fancy, and, of course, put it together wrong.  Then he
+went on to bully his elder brother, and locked him up in prison,
+and starved him, till for many hundred years poor Analysis never
+grew at all, but remained dwarfed, and stupid, and all but blind
+for want of light; while Synthesis, and all the hasty conceited
+people who followed him, grew stout and strong and tyrannous, and
+overspread the whole world, and ruled it at their will.  But the
+fault of all the work of Synthesis was just this:  that it would
+not work.  His watches would not keep time, his soldiers would not
+fight, his ships would not sail, his houses would not keep the
+rain out.  So every time he failed in his work he had to go to
+poor Analysis in his dungeon, and bully him into taking a thing or
+two to pieces, and giving him a few sound facts out of them, just
+to go on with till he came to grief again, boasting in the
+meantime that he and not Analysis had found out the facts.  And at
+last he grew so conceited that he fancied he knew all that Madam
+How could teach him, or Lady Why either, and that he understood
+all things in heaven and earth; while it was not the real heaven
+and earth that he was thinking of, but a sham heaven and a sham
+earth, which he had built up out of his guesses and his own
+fancies.
+
+And the more Synthesis waxed in pride, and the more he trampled
+upon his poor brother, the more reckless he grew, and the more
+willing to deceive himself.  If his real flowers would not grow,
+he cut out paper flowers, and painted them and said that they
+would do just as well as natural ones.  If his dolls would not
+work, he put strings and wires behind them to make them nod their
+heads and open their eyes, and then persuaded other people, and
+perhaps half-persuaded himself, that they were alive.  If the hand
+of his weather-glass went down, he nailed it up to insure a fine
+day, and tortured, burnt, or murdered every one who said it did
+not keep up of itself.  And many other foolish and wicked things
+he did, which little boys need not hear of yet.
+
+But at last his punishment came, according to the laws of his
+grandmother, Madam How, which are like the laws of the Medes and
+Persians, and alter not, as you and all mankind will sooner or
+later find; for he grew so rich and powerful that he grew careless
+and lazy, and thought about nothing but eating and drinking, till
+people began to despise him more and more.  And one day he left
+the dungeon of Analysis so ill guarded, that Analysis got out and
+ran away.  Great was the hue and cry after him; and terribly would
+he have been punished had he been caught.  But, lo and behold,
+folks had grown so disgusted with Synthesis that they began to
+take the part of Analysis.  Poor men hid him in their cottages,
+and scholars in their studies.  And when war arose about him,--and
+terrible wars did arise,--good kings, wise statesmen, gallant
+soldiers, spent their treasure and their lives in fighting for
+him.  All honest folk welcomed him, because he was honest; and all
+wise folk used him, for, instead of being a conceited tyrant like
+Synthesis, he showed himself the most faithful, diligent, humble
+of servants, ready to do every man's work, and answer every man's
+questions.  And among them all he got so well fed that he grew
+very shortly into the giant that he ought to have been all along;
+and was, and will be for many a year to come, perfectly able to
+take care of himself.
+
+As for poor Synthesis, he really has fallen so low in these days,
+that one cannot but pity him.  He now goes about humbly after his
+brother, feeding on any scraps that are thrown to him, and is
+snubbed and rapped over the knuckles, and told one minute to hold
+his tongue and mind his own business, and the next that he has no
+business at all to mind, till he has got into such a poor way that
+some folks fancy he will die, and are actually digging his grave
+already, and composing his epitaph.  But they are trying to wear
+the bear's skin before the bear is killed; for Synthesis is not
+dead, nor anything like it; and he will rise up again some day, to
+make good friends with his brother Analysis, and by his help do
+nobler and more beautiful work than he has ever yet done in the
+world.
+
+So now Analysis has got the upper hand; so much so that he is in
+danger of being spoilt by too much prosperity, as his brother was
+before him; in which case he too will have his fall; and a great
+deal of good it will do him.  And that is the end of my story, and
+a true story it is.
+
+Now you must remember, whenever you have to do with him, that
+Analysis, like fire, is a very good servant, but a very bad
+master.  For, having got his freedom only of late years or so, he
+is, like young men when they come suddenly to be their own
+masters, apt to be conceited, and to fancy that he knows
+everything, when really he knows nothing, and can never know
+anything, but only knows about things, which is a very different
+matter.  Indeed, nowadays he pretends that he can teach his old
+grandmother, Madam How, not only how to suck eggs, but to make
+eggs into the bargain; while the good old lady just laughs at him
+kindly, and lets him run on, because she knows he will grow wiser
+in time, and learn humility by his mistakes and failures, as I
+hope you will from yours.
+
+However, Analysis is a very clever young giant, and can do
+wonderful work as long as he meddles only with dead things, like
+this bit of lime.  He can take it to pieces, and tell you of what
+things it is made, or seems to be made; and take them to pieces
+again, and tell you what each of them is made of; and so on, till
+he gets conceited, and fancies that he can find out some one Thing
+of all things (which he calls matter), of which all other things
+are made; and some Way of all ways (which he calls force), by
+which all things are made:  but when he boasts in that way, old
+Madam How smiles, and says, "My child, before you can say that,
+you must remember a hundred things which you are forgetting, and
+learn a hundred thousand things which you do not know;" and then
+she just puts her hand over his eyes, and Master Analysis begins
+groping in the dark, and talking the saddest nonsense.  So beware
+of him, and keep him in his own place, and to his own work, or he
+will flatter you, and get the mastery of you, and persuade you
+that he can teach you a thousand things of which he knows no more
+than he does why a duck's egg never hatches into a chicken.  And
+remember, if Master Analysis ever grows saucy and conceited with
+you, just ask him that last riddle, and you will shut him up at
+once.
+
+And why?
+
+Because Analysis can only explain to you a little about dead
+things, like stones--inorganic things as they are called.  Living
+things--organisms, as they are called--he cannot explain to you at
+all.  When he meddles with them, he always ends like the man who
+killed his goose to get the golden eggs.  He has to kill his
+goose, or his flower, or his insect, before he can analyse it; and
+then it is not a goose, but only the corpse of a goose; not a
+flower, but only the dead stuff of the flower.
+
+And therefore he will never do anything but fail, when he tries to
+find out the life in things.  How can he, when he has to take the
+life out of them first?  He could not even find out how a plum-
+pudding is made by merely analysing it.  He might part the sugar,
+and the flour, and the suet; he might even (for he is very clever,
+and very patient too, the more honour to him) take every atom of
+sugar out of the flour with which it had got mixed, and every atom
+of brown colour which had got out of the plums and currants into
+the body of the pudding, and then, for aught I know, put the
+colouring matter back again into the plums and currants; and then,
+for aught I know, turn the boiled pudding into a raw one again,--
+for he is a great conjurer, as Madam How's grandson is bound to
+be:  but yet he would never find out how the pudding was made,
+unless some one told him the great secret which the sailors in the
+old story forgot--that the cook boiled it in a cloth.
+
+This is Analysis's weak point--don't let it be yours--that in all
+his calculations he is apt to forget the cloth, and indeed the
+cook likewise.  No doubt he can analyse the matter of things:  but
+he will keep forgetting that he cannot analyse their form.
+
+Do I mean their shape?
+
+No, my child; no.  I mean something which makes the shape of
+things, and the matter of them likewise, but which folks have lost
+sight of nowadays, and do not seem likely to get sight of again
+for a few hundred years.  So I suppose that you need not trouble
+your head about it, but may just follow the fashions as long as
+they last.
+
+About this piece of lime, however, Analysis can tell us a great
+deal.  And we may trust what he says, and believe that he
+understands what he says.
+
+Why?
+
+Think now.  If you took your watch to pieces, you would probably
+spoil it for ever; you would have perhaps broken, and certainly
+mislaid, some of the bits; and not even a watchmaker could put it
+together again.  You would have analysed the watch wrongly.  But
+if a watchmaker took it to pieces then any other watchmaker could
+put it together again to go as well as ever, because they both
+understand the works, how they fit into each other, and what the
+use and the power of each is.  Its being put together again
+rightly would be a proof that it had been taken to pieces rightly.
+
+And so with Master Analysis.  If he can take a thing to pieces so
+that his brother Synthesis can put it together again, you may be
+sure that he has done his work rightly.
+
+Now he can take a bit of chalk to pieces, so that it shall become
+several different things, none of which is chalk, or like chalk at
+all.  And then his brother Synthesis can put them together again,
+so that they shall become chalk, as they were before.  He can do
+that very nearly, but not quite.  There is, in every average piece
+of chalk, something which he cannot make into chalk again when he
+has once unmade it.
+
+What that is I will show you presently; and a wonderful tale hangs
+thereby.  But first we will let Analysis tell us what chalk is
+made of, as far as he knows.
+
+He will say--Chalk is carbonate of lime.
+
+But what is carbonate of lime made of?
+
+Lime and carbonic acid.
+
+And what is lime?
+
+The oxide of a certain metal, called calcium.
+
+What do you mean?
+
+That quicklime is a certain metal mixed with oxygen gas; and
+slacked lime is the same, mixed with water.
+
+So lime is a metal.  What is a metal?  Nobody knows.
+
+And what is oxygen gas?  Nobody knows.
+
+Well, Analysis, stops short very soon.  He does not seem to know
+much about the matter.
+
+Nay, nay, you are wrong there.  It is just "about the matter" that
+he does know, and knows a great deal, and very accurately; what he
+does not know is the matter itself.  He will tell you wonderful
+things about oxygen gas--how the air is full of it, the water full
+of it, every living thing full of it; how it changes hard bright
+steel into soft, foul rust; how a candle cannot burn without it,
+or you live without it.  But what it is he knows not.
+
+Will he ever know?
+
+That is Lady Why's concern, and not ours.  Meanwhile he has a
+right to find out if he can.  But what do you want to ask him
+next?
+
+What?  Oh!  What carbonic acid is.  He can tell you that.  Carbon
+and oxygen gas.
+
+But what is carbon?
+
+Nobody knows.
+
+Why, here is this stupid Analysis at fault again.
+
+Nay, nay, again.  Be patient with him.  If he cannot tell you what
+carbon is, he can tell you what is carbon, which is well worth
+knowing.  He will tell you, for instance, that every time you
+breathe or speak, what comes out of your mouth is carbonic acid;
+and that, if your breath comes on a bit of slacked lime, it will
+begin to turn it back into the chalk from which it was made; and
+that, if your breath comes on the leaves of a growing plant, that
+leaf will take the carbon out of it, and turn it into wood.  And
+surely that is worth knowing,--that you may be helping to make
+chalk, or to make wood, every time you breathe.
+
+Well; that is very curious.
+
+But now, ask him, What is carbon?  And he will tell you, that many
+things are carbon.  A diamond is carbon; and so is blacklead; and
+so is charcoal and coke, and coal in part, and wood in part.
+
+What?  Does Analysis say that a diamond and charcoal are the same
+thing?
+
+Yes.
+
+Then his way of taking things to pieces must be a very clumsy one,
+if he can find out no difference between diamond and charcoal.
+
+Well, perhaps it is:  but you must remember that, though he is
+very old--as old as the first man who ever lived--he has only been
+at school for the last three hundred years or so.  And remember,
+too, that he is not like you, who have some one else to teach you.
+He has had to teach himself, and find out for himself, and make
+his own tools, and work in the dark besides.  And I think it is
+very much to his credit that he ever found out that diamond and
+charcoal were the same things.  You would never have found it out
+for yourself, you will agree.
+
+No:  but how did he do it?
+
+He taught a very famous chemist, Lavoisier, about ninety years
+ago, how to burn a diamond in oxygen--and a very difficult trick
+that is; and Lavoisier found that the diamond when burnt turned
+almost entirely into carbonic acid and water, as blacklead and
+charcoal do; and more, that each of them turned into the same
+quantity of carbonic acid, And so he knew, as surely as man can
+know anything, that all these things, however different to our
+eyes and fingers, are really made of the same thing,--pure carbon.
+
+But what makes them look and feel so different?
+
+That Analysis does not know yet.  Perhaps he will find out some
+day; for he is very patient, and very diligent, as you ought to
+be.  Meanwhile, be content with him:  remember that though he
+cannot see through a milestone yet, he can see farther into one
+than his neighbours.  Indeed his neighbours cannot see into a
+milestone at all, but only see the outside of it, and know things
+only by rote, like parrots, without understanding what they mean
+and how they are made.
+
+So now remember that chalk is carbonate of lime, and that it is
+made up of three things, calcium, oxygen, and carbon; and that
+therefore its mark is CaCO(3), in Analysis's language, which I
+hope you will be able to read some day.
+
+But how is it that Analysis and Synthesis cannot take all this
+chalk to pieces, and put it together again?
+
+Look here; what is that in the chalk?
+
+Oh! a shepherd's crown, such as we often find in the gravel, only
+fresh and white.
+
+Well; you know what that was once.  I have often told you: --a
+live sea-egg, covered with prickles, which crawls at the bottom of
+the sea.
+
+Well, I am sure that Master Synthesis could not put that together
+again:  and equally sure that Master Analysis might spend ages in
+taking it to pieces, before he found out how it was made.  And--we
+are lucky to-day, for this lower chalk to the south has very few
+fossils in it--here is something else which is not mere carbonate
+of lime.  Look at it.
+
+A little cockle, something like a wrinkled hazel-nut.
+
+No; that is no cockle.  Madam How invented that ages and ages
+before she thought of cockles, and the animal which lived inside
+that shell was as different from a cockle-animal as a sparrow is
+from a dog.  That is a Terebratula, a gentleman of a very ancient
+and worn-out family.  He and his kin swarmed in the old seas, even
+as far back as the time when the rocks of the Welsh mountains were
+soft mud; as you will know when you read that great book of Sir
+Roderick Murchison's, Siluria.  But as the ages rolled on, they
+got fewer and fewer, these Terebratulae; and now there are hardly
+any of them left; only six or seven sorts are left about these
+islands, which cling to stones in deep water; and the first time I
+dredged two of them out of Loch Fyne, I looked at them with awe,
+as on relics from another world, which had lasted on through
+unnumbered ages and changes, such as one's fancy could not grasp.
+
+But you will agree that, if Master Analysis took that shell to
+pieces, Master Synthesis would not be likely to put it together
+again; much less to put it together in the right way, in which
+Madam How made it.
+
+And what was that?
+
+By making a living animal, which went on growing, that is, making
+itself; and making, as it grew, its shell to live in.  Synthesis
+has not found out yet the first step towards doing that; and, as I
+believe, he never will.
+
+But there would be no harm in his trying?
+
+Of course not.  Let everybody try to do everything they fancy.
+Even if they fail, they will have learnt at least that they cannot
+do it.
+
+But now--and this is a secret which you would never find out for
+yourself, at least without the help of a microscope--the greater
+part of this lump of chalk is made up of things which neither
+Analysis can perfectly take to pieces, nor Synthesis put together
+again.  It is made of dead organisms, that is, things which have
+been made by living creatures.  If you washed and brushed that
+chalk into powder, you would find it full of little things like
+the Dentalina in this drawing, and many other curious forms.  I
+will show you some under the microscope one day.
+
+They are the shells of animals called Foraminifera, because the
+shells of some of them are full of holes, through which they put
+out tiny arms.  So small they are and so many, that there may be,
+it is said, forty thousand of them in a bit of chalk an inch every
+way.  In numbers past counting, some whole, some broken, some
+ground to the finest powder, they make up vast masses of England,
+which are now chalk downs; and in some foreign countries they make
+up whole mountains.  Part of the building stone of the Great
+Pyramid in Egypt is composed, I am told, entirely of them.
+
+And how did they get into the chalk?
+
+Ah!  How indeed?  Let us think.  The chalk must have been laid
+down at the bottom of a sea, because there are sea-shells in it.
+Besides, we find little atomies exactly like these alive now in
+many seas; and therefore it is fair to suppose these lived in the
+sea also.
+
+Besides, they were not washed into the chalk by any sudden flood.
+The water in which they settled must have been quite still, or
+these little delicate creatures would have been ground into
+powder--or rather into paste.  Therefore learned men soon made up
+their minds that these things were laid down at the bottom of a
+deep sea, so deep that neither wind, nor tide, nor currents could
+stir the everlasting calm.
+
+Ah! it is worth thinking over, for it shows how shrewd a giant
+Analysis is, and how fast he works in these days, now that he has
+got free and well fed;--worth thinking over, I say, how our
+notions about these little atomies have changed during the last
+forty years.
+
+We used to find them sometimes washed up among the sea-sand on the
+wild Atlantic coast; and we were taught, in the days when old Dr.
+Turton was writing his book on British shells at Bideford, to call
+them Nautili, because their shells were like Nautilus shells.  Men
+did not know then that the animal which lives in them is no more
+like a Nautilus animal than it is like a cow.
+
+For a Nautilus, you must know, is made like a cuttlefish, with
+eyes, and strong jaws for biting, and arms round them; and has a
+heart, and gills, and a stomach; and is altogether a very well-
+made beast, and, I suspect, a terrible tyrant to little fish and
+sea-slugs, just as the cuttlefish is.  But the creatures which
+live in these little shells are about the least finished of Madam
+How's works.  They have neither mouth nor stomach, eyes nor limbs.
+They are mere live bags full of jelly, which can take almost any
+shape they like, and thrust out arms--or what serve for arms--
+through the holes in their shells, and then contract them into
+themselves again, as this Globigerina does.  What they feed on,
+how they grow, how they make their exquisitely-formed shells,
+whether, indeed, they are, strictly speaking, animals or
+vegetables, Analysis has not yet found out.  But when you come to
+read about them, you will find that they, in their own way, are
+just as wonderful and mysterious as a butterfly or a rose; and
+just as necessary, likewise, to Madam How's work; for out of them,
+as I told you, she makes whole sheets of down, whole ranges of
+hills.
+
+No one knew anything, I believe, about them, save that two or
+three kinds of them were found in chalk, till a famous Frenchman,
+called D'Orbigny, just thirty years ago, told the world how he had
+found many beautiful fresh kinds; and, more strange still, that
+some of these kinds were still alive at the bottom of the
+Adriatic, and of the harbour of Alexandria, in Egypt.
+
+Then in 1841 a gentleman named Edward Forbes,--now with God--whose
+name will be for ever dear to all who love science, and honour
+genius and virtue,-- found in the AEgean Sea "a bed of chalk," he
+said, "full of Foraminifera, and shells of Pteropods," forming at
+the bottom of the sea.
+
+And what are Pteropods?
+
+What you might call sea-moths (though they are not really moths),
+which swim about on the surface of the water, while the right-
+whales suck them in tens of thousands into the great whalebone net
+which fringes their jaws.  Here are drawings of them.  1. Limacina
+(on which the whales feed); and 2. Hyalea, a lovely little thing
+in a glass shell, which lives in the Mediterranean.
+
+But since then strange discoveries have been made, especially by
+the naval officers who surveyed the bottom of the great Atlantic
+Ocean before laying down the electric cable between Ireland and
+America.  And this is what they found:
+
+That at the bottom of the Atlantic were vast plains of soft mud,
+in some places 2500 fathoms (15,000 feet) deep; that is, as deep
+as the Alps are high.  And more:  they found out, to their
+surprise, that the oozy mud of the Atlantic floor was made up
+almost entirely of just the same atomies as make up our chalk,
+especially globigerinas; that, in fact, a vast bed of chalk was
+now forming at the bottom of the Atlantic, with living shells and
+sea-animals of the most brilliant colours crawling about on it in
+black darkness, and beds of sponges growing out of it, just as the
+sponges grew at the bottom of the old chalk ocean, and were all,
+generation after generation, turned into flints.
+
+And, for reasons which you will hardly understand, men are
+beginning now to believe that the chalk has never ceased to be
+made, somewhere or other, for many thousand years, ever since the
+Winchester Downs were at the bottom of the sea:  and that "the
+Globigerina-mud is not merely A chalk formation, but a
+continuation of THE chalk formation, so THAT WE MAY BE SAID TO BE
+STILL LIVING IN THE AGE OF CHALK." {1}  Ah, my little man, what
+would I not give to see you, before I die, add one such thought as
+that to the sum of human knowledge!
+
+So there the little creatures have been lying, making chalk out of
+the lime in the sea-water, layer over layer, the young over the
+old, the dead over the living, year after year, age after age--for
+how long?
+
+Who can tell?  How deep the layer of new chalk at the bottom of
+the Atlantic is, we can never know.  But the layer of live atomies
+on it is not an inch thick, probably not a tenth of an inch.  And
+if it grew a tenth of an inch a year, or even a whole inch, how
+many years must it have taken to make the chalk of our downs,
+which is in some parts 1300 feet thick?  How many inches are there
+in 1300 feet?  Do that sum, and judge for yourself.
+
+One difference will be found between the chalk now forming at the
+bottom of the ocean, if it ever become dry land, and the chalk on
+which you tread on the downs.  The new chalk will be full of the
+teeth and bones of whales--warm-blooded creatures, who suckle
+their young like cows, instead of laying eggs, like birds and
+fish.  For there were no whales in the old chalk ocean; but our
+modern oceans are full of cachalots, porpoises, dolphins, swimming
+in shoals round any ship; and their bones and teeth, and still
+more their ear-bones, will drop to the bottom as they die, and be
+found, ages hence, in the mud which the live atomies make, along
+with wrecks of mighty ships
+
+
+"Great anchors, heaps of pearl,"
+
+
+and all that man has lost in the deep seas.  And sadder fossils
+yet, my child, will be scattered on those white plains:-
+
+
+"To them the love of woman hath gone down,
+Dark roll their waves o'er manhood's noble head.
+O'er youth's bright locks, and beauty's flowing crown;
+Yet shall they hear a voice, 'Restore the dead.'
+Earth shall reclaim her precious things from thee.
+Give back the dead, thou Sea!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--THE CORAL-REEF
+
+
+
+Now you want to know what I meant when I talked of a bit of lime
+going out to sea, and forming part of a coral island, and then of
+a limestone rock, and then of a marble statue.  Very good.  Then
+look at this stone.
+
+What a curious stone!  Did it come from any place near here?
+
+No.  It came from near Dudley, in Staffordshire, where the soils
+are worlds on worlds older than they are here, though they were
+made in the same way as these and all other soils.  But you are
+not listening to me.
+
+Why, the stone is full of shells, and bits of coral; and what are
+these wonderful things coiled and tangled together, like the
+snakes in Medusa's hair in the picture?  Are they snakes?
+
+If they are, then they must be snakes who have all one head; for
+see, they are joined together at their larger ends; and snakes
+which are branched, too, which no snake ever was.
+
+Yes.  I suppose they are not snakes.  And they grow out of a
+flower, too; and it has a stalk, jointed, too, as plants sometimes
+are; and as fishes' backbones are too.  Is it a petrified plant or
+flower?
+
+No; though I do not deny that it looks like one.  The creature
+most akin to it which you ever saw is a star-fish.
+
+What! one of the red star-fishes which one finds on the beach?
+Its arms are not branched.
+
+No.  But there are star-fishes with branched arms still in the
+sea.  You know that pretty book (and learned book, too), Forbes's
+British Star-fishes?  You like to look it through for the sake of
+the vignettes,--the mermaid and her child playing in the sea.
+
+Oh yes, and the kind bogie who is piping while the sandstars
+dance; and the other who is trying to pull out the star-fish which
+the oyster has caught.
+
+Yes.  But do you recollect the drawing of the Medusa's head, with
+its curling arms, branched again and again without end?  Here it
+is.  No, you shall not look at the vignettes now.  We must mind
+business.  Now look at this one; the Feather-star, with arms
+almost like fern-fronds.  And in foreign seas there are many other
+branched star-fish beside.
+
+But they have no stalks?
+
+Do not be too sure of that.  This very feather-star, soon after it
+is born, grows a tiny stalk, by which it holds on to corallines
+and sea-weeds; and it is not till afterwards that it breaks loose
+from that stalk, and swims away freely into the wide water.  And
+in foreign seas there are several star-fish still who grow on
+stalks all their lives, as this fossil one did.
+
+How strange that a live animal should grow on a stalk, like a
+flower!
+
+Not quite like a flower.  A flower has roots, by which it feeds in
+the soil.  These things grow more like sea-weeds, which have no
+roots, but only hold on to the rock by the foot of the stalk, as a
+ship holds on by her anchor.  But as for its being strange that
+live animals should grow on stalks, if it be strange it is common
+enough, like many far stranger things.  For under the water are
+millions on millions of creatures, spreading for miles on miles,
+building up at last great reefs of rocks, and whole islands, which
+all grow rooted first to the rock, like sea-weeds; and what is
+more, they grow, most of them, from one common root, branching
+again and again, and every branchlet bearing hundreds of living
+creatures, so that the whole creation is at once one creature and
+many creatures.  Do you not understand me?
+
+No.
+
+Then fancy to yourself a bush like that hawthorn bush, with
+numberless blossoms, and every blossom on that bush a separate
+living thing, with its own mouth, and arms, and stomach, budding
+and growing fresh live branches and fresh live flowers, as fast as
+the old ones die:  and then you will see better what I mean.
+
+How wonderful!
+
+Yes; but not more wonderful than your finger, for it, too, is made
+up of numberless living things.
+
+My finger made of living things?
+
+What else can it be?  When you cut your finger, does not the place
+heal?
+
+Of course.
+
+And what is healing but growing again?  And how could the atoms of
+your fingers grow, and make fresh skin, if they were not each of
+them alive?  There, I will not puzzle you with too much at once;
+you will know more about all that some day.  Only remember now,
+that there is nothing wonderful in the world outside you but has
+its counterpart of something just as wonderful, and perhaps more
+wonderful, inside you.  Man is the microcosm, the little world,
+said the philosophers of old; and philosophers nowadays are
+beginning to see that their old guess is actual fact and true.
+
+But what are these curious sea-creatures called, which are
+animals, yet grow like plants?
+
+They have more names than I can tell you, or you remember.  Those
+which helped to make this bit of stone are called coral-insects:
+but they are not really insects, and are no more like insects than
+you are.  Coral-polypes is the best name for them, because they
+have arms round their mouths, something like a cuttle-fish, which
+the ancients called Polypus.  But the animal which you have seen
+likest to most of them is a sea-anemone.
+
+Look now at this piece of fresh coral--for coral it is, though not
+like the coral which your sister wears in her necklace.  You see
+it is full of pipes; in each of those pipes has lived what we will
+call, for the time being, a tiny sea-anemone, joined on to his
+brothers by some sort of flesh and skin; and all of them together
+have built up, out of the lime in the sea-water, this common
+house, or rather town, of lime.
+
+But is it not strange and wonderful?
+
+Of course it is:  but so is everything when you begin to look into
+it; and if I were to go on, and tell you what sort of young ones
+these coral-polypes have, and what becomes of them, you would hear
+such wonders, that you would be ready to suspect that I was
+inventing nonsense, or talking in my dreams.  But all that belongs
+to Madam How's deepest book of all, which is called the BOOK OF
+KIND:  the book which children cannot understand, and in which
+only the very wisest men are able to spell out a few words, not
+knowing, and of course not daring to guess, what wonder may come
+next.
+
+Now we will go back to our stone, and talk about how it was made,
+and how the stalked star-fish, which you mistook for a flower,
+ever got into the stone.
+
+Then do you think me silly for fancying that a fossil star-fish
+was a flower?
+
+I should be silly if I did.  There is no silliness in not knowing
+what you cannot know.  You can only guess about new things, which
+you have never seen before, by comparing them with old things,
+which you have seen before; and you had seen flowers, and snakes,
+and fishes' backbones, and made a very fair guess from them.
+After all, some of these stalked star-fish are so like flowers,
+lilies especially, that they are called Encrinites; and the whole
+family is called Crinoids, or lily-like creatures, from the Greek
+work KRINON, a lily; and as for corals and corallines, learned
+men, in spite of all their care and shrewdness, made mistake after
+mistake about them, which they had to correct again and again,
+till now, I trust, they have got at something very like the truth.
+No, I shall only call you silly if you do what some little boys
+are apt to do--call other boys, and, still worse, servants or poor
+people, silly for not knowing what they cannot know.
+
+But are not poor people often very silly about animals and plants?
+The boys at the village school say that slowworms are poisonous;
+is not that silly?
+
+Not at all.  They know that adders bite, and so they think that
+slowworms bite too.  They are wrong; and they must be told that
+they are wrong, and scolded if they kill a slowworm.  But silly
+they are not.
+
+But is it not silly to fancy that swallows sleep all the winter at
+the bottom of the pond?
+
+I do not think so.  The boys cannot know where the swallows go;
+and if you told them--what is true--that the swallows find their
+way every autumn through France, through Spain, over the Straits
+of Gibraltar, into Morocco, and some, I believe, over the great
+desert of Zahara into Negroland:  and if you told them--what is
+true also--that the young swallows actually find their way into
+Africa without having been along the road before; because the old
+swallows go south a week or two first, and leave the young ones to
+guess out the way for themselves:  if you told them that, then
+they would have a right to say, "Do you expect us to believe that?
+That is much more wonderful than that the swallows should sleep in
+the pond."
+
+But is it?
+
+Yes; to them.  They know that bats and dormice and other things
+sleep all the winter; so why should not swallows sleep?  They see
+the swallows about the water, and often dipping almost into it.
+They know that fishes live under water, and that many insects--
+like May-flies and caddis-flies and water-beetles--live sometimes
+in the water, sometimes in the open air; and they cannot know--you
+do not know--what it is which prevents a bird's living under
+water.  So their guess is really a very fair one; no more silly
+than that of the savages, who when they first saw the white men's
+ships, with their huge sails, fancied they were enormous sea-
+birds; and when they heard the cannons fire, said that the ships
+spoke in thunder and lightning.  Their guess was wrong, but not
+silly; for it was the best guess they could make.
+
+But I do know of one old woman who was silly.  She was a boy's
+nurse, and she gave the boy a thing which she said was one of the
+snakes which St. Hilda turned into stone; and told him that they
+found plenty of them at Whitby, where she was born, all coiled up;
+but what was very odd, their heads had always been broken of.  And
+when he took it, to his father, he told him it was only a fossil
+shell--an Ammonite.  And he went back and laughed at his nurse,
+and teased her till she was quite angry.
+
+Then he was very lucky that she did not box his ears, for that was
+what he deserved.  I dare say that, though his nurse had never
+heard of Ammonites, she was a wise old dame enough, and knew a
+hundred things which he did not know, and which were far more
+important than Ammonites, even to him.
+
+How?
+
+Because if she had not known how to nurse him well, he would
+perhaps have never grown up alive and strong.  And if she had not
+known how to make him obey and speak the truth, he might have
+grown up a naughty boy.
+
+But was she not silly?
+
+No.  She only believed what the Whitby folk, I understand, have
+some of them believed for many hundred years.  And no one can be
+blamed for thinking as his forefathers did, unless he has cause to
+know better.
+
+Surely she might have known better?
+
+How?  What reason could she have to believe the Ammonite was a
+shell?  It is not the least like cockles, or whelks, or any shell
+she ever saw.
+
+What reason either could she have to guess that Whitby cliff had
+once been coral-mud, at the bottom of the sea?  No more reason, my
+dear child, than you would have to guess that this stone had been
+coral-mud likewise, if I did not teach you so,--or rather, try to
+make you teach yourself so.
+
+No.  I say it again.  If you wish to learn, I will only teach you
+on condition that you do not laugh at, or despise, those good and
+honest and able people who do not know or care about these things,
+because they have other things to think of:  like old John out
+there ploughing.  He would not believe you--he would hardly
+believe me--if we told him that this stone had been once a swarm
+of living things, of exquisite shapes and glorious colours.  And
+yet he can plough and sow, and reap and mow, and fell and strip,
+and hedge and ditch, and give his neighbours sound advice, and
+take the measure of a man's worth from ten minutes' talk, and say
+his prayers, and keep his temper, and pay his debts,--which last
+three things are more than a good many folks can do who fancy
+themselves a whole world wiser than John in the smock-frock.
+
+Oh, but I want to hear about the exquisite shapes and glorious
+colours.
+
+Of course you do, little man.  A few fine epithets take your fancy
+far more than a little common sense and common humility; but in
+that you are no worse than some of your elders.  So now for the
+exquisite shapes and glorious colours.  I have never seen them;
+though I trust to see them ere I die.  So what they are like I can
+only tell from what I have learnt from Mr. Darwin, and Mr.
+Wallace, and Mr. Jukes, and Mr. Gosse, and last, but not least,
+from one whose soul was as beautiful as his face, Lucas Barrett,--
+too soon lost to science,--who was drowned in exploring such a
+coral-reef as this stone was once.
+
+Then there are such things alive now?
+
+Yes, and no.  The descendants of most of them live on, altered by
+time, which alters all things; and from the beauty of the children
+we can guess at the beauty of their ancestors; just as from the
+coral-reefs which exist now we can guess how the coral-reefs of
+old were made.  And that this stone was once part of a coral-reef
+the corals in it prove at first sight.
+
+And what is a coral-reef like?
+
+You have seen the room in the British Museum full of corals,
+madrepores, brain-stones, corallines, and sea-ferns?
+
+Oh yes.
+
+Then fancy all those alive.  Not as they are now, white stone:
+but covered in jelly; and out of every pore a little polype, like
+a flower, peeping out.  Fancy them of every gaudy colour you
+choose.  No bed of flowers, they say, can be more brilliant than
+the corals, as you look down on them through the clear sea.
+Fancy, again, growing among them and crawling over them, strange
+sea-anemones, shells, star-fish, sea-slugs, and sea-cucumbers with
+feathery gills, crabs, and shrimps, and hundreds of other animals,
+all as strange in shape, and as brilliant in colour.  You may let
+your fancy run wild.  Nothing so odd, nothing so gay, even entered
+your dreams, or a poet's, as you may find alive at the bottom of
+the sea, in the live flower-gardens of the sea-fairies.
+
+There will be shoals of fish, too, playing in and out, as strange
+and gaudy as the rest,--parrot-fish who browse on the live coral
+with their beak-like teeth, as cattle browse on grass; and at the
+bottom, it may be, larger and uglier fish, who eat the crabs and
+shell-fish, shells and all, grinding them up as a dog grinds a
+bone, and so turning shells and corals into fine soft mud, such as
+this stone is partly made of.
+
+But what happens to all the delicate little corals if a storm
+comes on?
+
+What, indeed?  Madam How has made them so well and wisely, that,
+like brave and good men, the more trouble they suffer the stronger
+they are.  Day and night, week after week, the trade-wind blows
+upon them, hurling the waves against them in furious surf,
+knocking off great lumps of coral, grinding them to powder,
+throwing them over the reef into the shallow water inside.  But
+the heavier the surf beats upon them, the stronger the polypes
+outside grow, repairing their broken houses, and building up fresh
+coral on the dead coral below, because it is in the fresh sea-
+water that beats upon the surf that they find most lime with which
+to build.  And as they build they form a barrier against the surf,
+inside of which, in water still as glass, the weaker and more
+delicate things can grow in safety, just as these very Encrinites
+may have grown, rooted in the lime-mud, and waving their slender
+arms at the bottom of the clear lagoon.  Such mighty builders are
+these little coral polypes, that all the works of men are small
+compared with theirs.  One single reef, for instance, which is
+entirely made by them, stretches along the north-east coast of
+Australia for nearly a thousand miles.  Of this you must read some
+day in Mr. Jukes's Voyage of H.M.S. "Fly."  Every island
+throughout a great part of the Pacific is fringed round each with
+its coral-reef, and there are hundreds of islands of strange
+shapes, and of Atolls, as they are called, or ring-islands, which
+are composed entirely of coral, and of nothing else.
+
+A ring-island?  How can an island be made in the shape of a ring?
+
+Ah! it was a long time before men found out that riddle.  Mr.
+Darwin was the first to guess the answer, as he has guessed many
+an answer beside.  These islands are each a ring, or nearly a ring
+of coral, with smooth shallow water inside:  but their outsides
+run down, like a mountain wall, sheer into seas hundreds of
+fathoms deep.  People used to believe, and reasonably enough, that
+the coral polypes began to build up the islands from the very
+bottom of the deep sea.
+
+But that would not account for the top of them being of the shape
+of a ring; and in time it was found out that the corals would not
+build except in shallow water, twenty or thirty fathoms deep at
+most, and men were at their wits' ends to find out the riddle.
+Then said Mr. Darwin, "Suppose one of those beautiful South Sea
+Islands, like Tahiti, the Queen of Isles, with its ring of coral-
+reef all round its shore, began sinking slowly under the sea.  The
+land, as it sunk, would be gone for good and all:  but the coral-
+reef round it would not, because the coral polypes would build up
+and up continually upon the skeletons of their dead parents, to
+get to the surface of the water, and would keep close to the top
+outside, however much the land sunk inside; and when the island
+had sunk completely beneath the sea, what would be left?  What
+must be left but a ring of coral reef, around the spot where the
+last mountain peak of the island sank beneath the sea?"  And so
+Mr. Darwin explained the shapes of hundreds of coral islands in
+the Pacific; and proved, too, some strange things besides (he
+proved, and other men, like Mr. Wallace, whose excellent book on
+the East Indian islands you must read some day, have proved in
+other ways) that there was once a great continent, joined perhaps
+to Australia and to New Guinea, in the Pacific Ocean, where is now
+nothing but deep sea, and coral-reefs which mark the mountain
+ranges of that sunken world.
+
+But how does the coral ever rise above the surface of the water
+and turn into hard stone?
+
+Of course the coral polypes cannot build above the high-tide mark;
+but the surf which beats upon them piles up their broken fragments
+just as a sea-beach is piled up, and hammers them together with
+that water hammer which is heavier and stronger than any you have
+ever seen in a smith's forge.  And then, as is the fashion of
+lime, the whole mass sets and becomes hard, as you may see mortar
+set; and so you have a low island a few feet above the sea.  Then
+sea-birds come to it, and rest and build; and seeds are floated
+thither from far lands; and among them almost always the cocoa-
+nut, which loves to grow by the sea-shore, and groves of cocoa
+palms grow up upon the lonely isle.  Then, perhaps, trees and
+bushes are drifted thither before the trade-wind; and entangled in
+their roots are seeds of other plants, and eggs or cocoons of
+insects; and so a few flowers and a few butterflies and beetles
+set up for themselves upon the new land.  And then a bird or two,
+caught in a storm and blown away to sea finds shelter in the
+cocoa-grove; and so a little new world is set up, in which (you
+must remember always) there are no four-footed beasts, nor snakes,
+nor lizards, nor frogs, nor any animals that cannot cross the sea.
+And on some of those islands they may live (indeed there is reason
+to believe they have lived), so long, that some of them have
+changed their forms, according to the laws of Madam How, who
+sooner or later fits each thing exactly for the place in which it
+is meant to live, till upon some of them you may find such strange
+and unique creatures as the famous cocoa-nut crab, which learned
+men call Birgus latro.  A great crab he is, who walks upon the
+tips of his toes a foot high above the ground.  And because he has
+often nothing to eat but cocoa-nuts, or at least they are the best
+things he can find, cocoa-nuts he has learned to eat, and after a
+fashion which it would puzzle you to imitate.  Some say that he
+climbs up the stems of the cocoa-nut trees, and pulls the fruit
+down for himself; but that, it seems, he does not usually do.
+What he does is this:  when he finds a fallen cocoa-nut, he begins
+tearing away the thick husk and fibre with his strong claws; and
+he knows perfectly well which end to tear it from, namely, from
+the end where the three eye-holes are, which you call the monkey's
+face, out of one of which you know, the young cocoa-nut tree would
+burst forth.  And when he has got to the eye-holes, he hammers
+through one of them with the point of his heavy claw.  So far, so
+good:  but how is he to get the meat out?  He cannot put his claw
+in.  He has no proboscis like a butterfly to insert and suck with.
+He is as far off from his dinner as the fox was when the stork
+offered him a feast in a long-necked jar.  What then do you think
+he does?  He turns himself round, puts in a pair of his hind
+pincers, which are very slender, and with them scoops the meat out
+of the cocoa-nut, and so puts his dinner into his mouth with his
+hind feet.  And even the cocoa-nut husk he does not waste; for he
+lives in deep burrows which he makes like a rabbit; and being a
+luxurious crab, and liking to sleep soft in spite of his hard
+shell, he lines them with a quantity of cocoa-nut fibre, picked
+out clean and fine, just as if he was going to make cocoa-nut
+matting of it.  And being also a clean crab, as I hope you are a
+clean little boy, he goes down to the sea every night to have his
+bath and moisten his gills, and so lives happy all his days, and
+gets so fat in his old age that he carries about his body nearly a
+quart of pure oil.
+
+That is the history of the cocoa-nut crab.  And if any one tells
+me that that crab acts only on what is called "instinct"; and does
+not think and reason, just as you and I think and reason, though
+of course not in words as you and I do:  then I shall be inclined
+to say that that person does not think nor reason either.
+
+Then were there many coral-reefs in Britain in old times?
+
+Yes, many and many, again and again; some whole ages older than
+this, a bit of which you see, and some again whole ages newer.
+But look:  then judge for yourself.  Look at this geological map.
+Wherever you see a bit of blue, which is the mark for limestone,
+you may say, "There is a bit of old coral-reef rising up to the
+surface."  But because I will not puzzle your little head with too
+many things at once, you shall look at one set of coral-reefs
+which are far newer than this bit of Dudley limestone, and which
+are the largest, I suppose, that ever were in this country; or, at
+least, there is more of them left than of any others.
+
+Look first at Ireland.  You see that almost all the middle of
+Ireland is coloured blue.  It is one great sheet of old coral-reef
+and coral-mud, which is now called the carboniferous limestone.
+You see red and purple patches rising out of it, like islands--and
+islands I suppose they were, of hard and ancient rock, standing up
+in the middle of the coral sea.
+
+But look again, and you will see that along the west coast of
+Ireland, except in a very few places, like Galway Bay, the blue
+limestone does not come down to the sea; the shore is coloured
+purple and brown, and those colours mark the ancient rocks and
+high mountains of Mayo and Galway and Kerry, which stand as
+barriers to keep the raging surf of the Atlantic from bursting
+inland and beating away, as it surely would in course of time, the
+low flat limestone plain of the middle of Ireland.  But the same
+coral-reefs once stretched out far to the westward into the
+Atlantic Ocean; and you may see the proof upon that map.  For in
+the western bays, in Clew Bay with its hundred islands, and Galway
+Bay with its Isles of Arran, and beautiful Kenmare, and beautiful
+Bantry, you see little blue spots, which are low limestone
+islands, standing in the sea, overhung by mountains far aloft.
+You have often heard those islands in Kenmare Bay talked of, and
+how some whom you know go to fish round them by night for turbot
+and conger; and when you hear them spoken of again, you must
+recollect that they are the last fragments of a great fringing
+coral-reef, which will in a few thousand years follow the fate of
+the rest, and be eaten up by the waves, while the mountains of
+hard rock stand round them still unchanged.
+
+Now look at England, and there you will see patches at least of a
+great coral-reef which was forming at the same time as that Irish
+one, and on which perhaps some of your schoolfellows have often
+stood.  You have heard of St. Vincent's Rocks at Bristol, and the
+marble cliffs, 250 feet in height, covered in part with rich wood
+and rare flowers, and the Avon running through the narrow gorge,
+and the stately ships sailing far below your feet from Bristol to
+the Severn sea.  And you may see, for here they are, corals from
+St. Vincent's Rocks, cut and polished, showing too that they also,
+like the Dudley limestone, are made up of corals and of coral-mud.
+Now, whenever you see St. Vincent's Rocks, as I suspect you very
+soon will, recollect where you are, and use your fancy, to paint
+for yourself a picture as strange as it is true.  Fancy that those
+rocks are what they once were, a coral-reef close to the surface
+of a shallow sea.  Fancy that there is no gorge of the Avon, no
+wide Severn sea--for those were eaten out by water ages and ages
+afterwards.  But picture to yourself the coral sea reaching away
+to the north, to the foot of the Welsh mountains; and then fancy
+yourself, if you will, in a canoe, paddling up through the coral-
+reefs, north and still north, up the valley down which the Severn
+now flows, up through what is now Worcestershire, then up through
+Staffordshire, then through Derbyshire, into Yorkshire, and so on
+through Durham and Northumberland, till your find yourself stopped
+by the Ettrick hills in Scotland; while all to the westward of
+you, where is now the greater part of England, was open sea.  You
+may say, if you know anything of the geography of England,
+"Impossible!  That would be to paddle over the tops of high
+mountains; over the top of the Peak in Derbyshire, over the top of
+High Craven and Whernside and Pen-y-gent and Cross Fell, and to
+paddle too over the Cheviot Hills, which part England and
+Scotland."  I know it, my child, I know it.  But so it was once on
+a time.  The high limestone mountains which part Lancashire and
+Yorkshire--the very chine and backbone of England--were once
+coral-reefs at the bottom of the sea.  They are all made up of the
+carboniferous limestone, so called, as your little knowledge of
+Latin ought to tell you, because it carries the coal; because the
+coalfields usually lie upon it.  It may be impossible in your
+eyes:  but remember always that nothing is impossible with God.
+
+But you said that the coal was made from plants and trees, and did
+plants and trees grow on this coral-reef?
+
+That I cannot say.  Trees may have grown on the dry parts of the
+reef, as cocoa-nuts grow now in the Pacific.  But the coal was not
+laid down upon it till long afterwards, when it had gone through
+many and strange changes.  For all through the chine of England,
+and in a part of Ireland too, there lies upon the top of the
+limestone a hard gritty rock, in some places three thousand feet
+thick, which is commonly called "the mill-stone grit."  And above
+that again the coal begins.  Now to make that 3000 feet of hard
+rock, what must have happened?  The sea-bottom must have sunk,
+slowly no doubt, carrying the coral-reefs down with it, 3000 feet
+at least.  And meanwhile sand and mud, made from the wearing away
+of the old lands in the North must have settled down upon it.  I
+say from the North--for there are no fossils, as far as I know, or
+sign of life, in these rocks of mill-stone grit; and therefore it
+is reasonable to suppose that they were brought from a cold
+current at the Pole, too cold to allow sea-beasts to live,--quite
+cold enough, certainly, to kill coral insects, who could only
+thrive in warm water coming from the South.
+
+Then, to go on with my story, upon the top of these mill-stone
+grits came sand and mud, and peat, and trees, and plants, washed
+out to sea, as far as we can guess, from the mouths of vast rivers
+flowing from the West, rivers as vast as the Amazon, the
+Mississippi, or the Orinoco are now; and so in long ages, upon the
+top of the limestone and upon the top of the mill-stone grit, were
+laid down those beds of coal which you see burnt now in every
+fire.
+
+But how did the coral-reefs rise till they became cliffs at
+Bristol and mountains in Yorkshire?
+
+The earthquake steam, I suppose, raised them.  One earthquake
+indeed, or series of earthquakes, there was, running along between
+Lancashire and Yorkshire, which made that vast crack and upheaval
+in the rocks, the Craven Fault, running, I believe, for more than
+a hundred miles, and lifting the rocks in some places several
+hundred feet.  That earthquake helped to make the high hills which
+overhang Manchester and Preston, and all the manufacturing county
+of Lancashire.  That earthquake helped to make the perpendicular
+cliff at Malham Cove, and many another beautiful bit of scenery.
+And that and other earthquakes, by heating the rocks from the
+fires below, may have helped to change them from soft coral into
+hard crystalline marble as you see them now, just as volcanic heat
+has hardened and purified the beautiful white marbles of
+Pentelicus and Paros in Greece, and Carrara in Italy, from which
+statues are carved unto this day.  Or the same earthquake may have
+heated and hardened the limestones simply by grinding and
+squeezing them; or they may have been heated and hardened in the
+course of long ages simply by the weight of the thousands of feet
+of other rock which lay upon them.  For pressure, you must
+remember, produces heat.  When you strike flint and steel
+together, the pressure of the blow not only makes bits of steel
+fly off, but makes them fly off in red-hot sparks.  When you
+hammer a piece of iron with a hammer, you will soon find it get
+quite warm.  When you squeeze the air together in your pop-gun,
+you actually make the air inside warmer, till the pellet flies
+out, and the air expands and cools again.  Nay, I believe you
+cannot hold up a stone on the palm of your hand without that stone
+after a while warming your hand, because it presses against you in
+trying to fall, and you press against it in trying to hold it up.
+And recollect above all the great and beautiful example of that
+law which you were lucky enough to see on the night of the 14th of
+November 1867, how those falling stars, as I told you then, were
+coming out of boundless space, colder than any ice on earth, and
+yet, simply by pressing against the air above our heads, they had
+their motion turned into heat, till they burned themselves up into
+trains of fiery dust.  So remember that wherever you have pressure
+you have heat, and that the pressure of the upper rocks upon the
+lower is quite enough, some think, to account for the older and
+lower rocks being harder than the upper and newer ones.
+
+But why should the lower rocks be older and the upper rocks newer?
+You told me just now that the high mountains in Wales were ages
+older than Windsor Forest, upon which we stand:  but yet how much
+lower we are here than if we were on a Welsh mountain.
+
+Ah, my dear child, of course that puzzles you, and I am afraid it
+must puzzle you still till we have another talk; or rather it
+seems to me that the best way to explain that puzzle to you would
+be for you and me to go a journey into the far west, and look into
+the matter for ourselves; and from here to the far west we will
+go, either in fancy or on a real railroad and steamboat, before we
+have another talk about these things.
+
+Now it is time to stop.  Is there anything more you want to know?
+for you look as if something was puzzling you still.
+
+Were there any men in the world while all this was going on?
+
+I think not.  We have no proof that there were not:  but also we
+have no proof that there were; the cave-men, of whom I told you,
+lived many ages after the coal was covered up.  You seem to be
+sorry that there were no men in the world then.
+
+Because it seems a pity that there was no one to see those
+beautiful coral-reefs and coal-forests.
+
+No one to see them, my child?  Who told you that?  Who told you
+there are not, and never have been any rational beings in this
+vast universe, save certain weak, ignorant, short-sighted
+creatures shaped like you and me?  But even if it were so, and no
+created eye had ever beheld those ancient wonders, and no created
+heart ever enjoyed them, is there not one Uncreated who has seen
+them and enjoyed them from the beginning?  Were not these
+creatures enjoying themselves each after their kind?  And was
+there not a Father in Heaven who was enjoying their enjoyment, and
+enjoying too their beauty, which He had formed according to the
+ideas of His Eternal Mind?  Recollect what you were told on
+Trinity Sunday--That this world was not made for man alone:  but
+that man, and this world, and the whole Universe was made for God;
+for He created all things, and for His pleasure they are, and were
+created.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X--FIELD AND WILD
+
+
+
+Where were we to go next?  Into the far west, to see how all the
+way along the railroads the new rocks and soils lie above the
+older, and yet how, when we get westward, the oldest rocks rise
+highest into the air.
+
+Well, we will go:  but not, I think, to-day.  Indeed I hardly know
+how we could get as far as Reading; for all the world is in the
+hay-field, and even the old horse must go thither too, and take
+his turn at the hay-cart.  Well, the rocks have been where they
+are for many a year, and they will wait our leisure patiently
+enough:  but Midsummer and the hay-field will not wait.  Let us
+take what God gives when He sends it, and learn the lesson that
+lies nearest to us.  After all, it is more to my old mind, and
+perhaps to your young mind too, to look at things which are young
+and fresh and living, rather than things which are old and worn
+and dead.  Let us leave the old stones, and the old bones, and the
+old shells, the wrecks of ancient worlds which have gone down into
+the kingdom of death, to teach us their grand lessons some other
+day; and let us look now at the world of light and life and
+beauty, which begins here at the open door, and stretches away
+over the hay-fields, over the woods, over the southern moors, over
+sunny France, and sunnier Spain, and over the tropic seas, down to
+the equator, and the palm-groves of the eternal summer.  If we
+cannot find something, even at starting from the open door, to
+teach us about Why and How, we must be very short-sighted, or very
+shallow-hearted.
+
+There is the old cock starling screeching in the eaves, because he
+wants to frighten us away, and take a worm to his children,
+without our finding out whereabouts his hole is.  How does he know
+that we might hurt him? and how again does he not know that we
+shall not hurt him? we, who for five-and-twenty years have let him
+and his ancestors build under those eaves in peace?  How did he
+get that quantity of half-wit, that sort of stupid cunning, into
+his little brain, and yet get no more?  And why (for this is a
+question of Why, and not of How) does he labour all day long,
+hunting for worms and insects for his children, while his wife
+nurses them in the nest?  Why, too, did he help her to build that
+nest with toil and care this spring, for the sake of a set of
+nestlings who can be of no gain or use to him, but only take the
+food out of his mouth?  Simply out of--what shall I call it, my
+child?--Love; that same sense of love and duty, coming surely from
+that one Fountain of all duty and all love, which makes your
+father work for you.  That the mother should take care of her
+young, is wonderful enough; but that (at least among many birds)
+the father should help likewise, is (as you will find out as you
+grow older) more wonderful far.  So there already the old starling
+has set us two fresh puzzles about How and Why, neither of which
+we shall get answered, at least on this side of the grave.
+
+Come on, up the field, under the great generous sun, who quarrels
+with no one, grudges no one, but shines alike upon the evil and
+the good.  What a gay picture he is painting now, with his light-
+pencils; for in them, remember, and not in the things themselves
+the colour lies.  See how, where the hay has been already carried,
+he floods all the slopes with yellow light, making them stand out
+sharp against the black shadows of the wood; while where the grass
+is standing still, he makes the sheets of sorrel-flower blush rosy
+red, or dapples the field with white oxeyes.
+
+But is not the sorrel itself red, and the oxeyes white?
+
+What colour are they at night, when the sun is gone?
+
+Dark.
+
+That is, no colour.  The very grass is not green at night.
+
+Oh, but it is if you look at it with a lantern.
+
+No, no.  It is the light of the lantern, which happens to be
+strong enough to make the leaves look green, though it is not
+strong enough to make a geranium look red.
+
+Not red?
+
+No; the geranium flowers by a lantern look black, while the leaves
+look green.  If you don't believe me, we will try.
+
+But why is that?
+
+Why, I cannot tell:  and how, you had best ask Professor Tyndall,
+if you ever have the honour of meeting him.
+
+But now--hark to the mowing-machine, humming like a giant night-
+jar.  Come up and look at it, and see how swift and smooth it
+shears the long grass down, so that in the middle of the swathe it
+seems to have merely fallen flat, and you must move it before you
+find that it has been cut off.
+
+Ah, there is a proof to us of what men may do if they will only
+learn the lessons which Madam How can teach them.  There is that
+boy, fresh from the National School, cutting more grass in a day
+than six strong mowers could have cut, and cutting it better, too;
+for the mowing-machine goes so much nearer to the ground than the
+scythe, that we gain by it two hundredweight of hay on every acre.
+And see, too, how persevering old Madam How will not stop her
+work, though the machine has cut off all the grass which she has
+been making for the last three months; for as fast as we shear it
+off, she makes it grow again.  There are fresh blades, here at our
+feet, a full inch long, which have sprung up in the last two days,
+for the cattle when they are turned in next week.
+
+But if the machine cuts all the grass, the poor mowers will have
+nothing to do.
+
+Not so.  They are all busy enough elsewhere.  There is plenty of
+other work to be done, thank God; and wholesomer and easier work
+than mowing with a burning sun on their backs, drinking gallons of
+beer, and getting first hot and then cold across the loins, till
+they lay in a store of lumbago and sciatica, to cripple them in
+their old age.  You delight in machinery because it is curious:
+you should delight in it besides because it does good, and nothing
+but good, where it is used, according to the laws of Lady Why,
+with care, moderation, and mercy, and fair-play between man and
+man.  For example:  just as the mowing-machine saves the mowers,
+the threshing-machine saves the threshers from rheumatism and
+chest complaints,--which they used to catch in the draught and
+dust of the unhealthiest place in the whole parish, which is, the
+old-fashioned barn's floor.  And so, we may hope, in future years
+all heavy drudgery and dirty work will be done more and more by
+machines, and people will have more and more chance of keeping
+themselves clean and healthy, and more and more time to read, and
+learn, and think, and be true civilised men and women, instead of
+being mere live ploughs, or live manure-carts, such as I have seen
+ere now.
+
+A live manure-cart?
+
+Yes, child.  If you had seen, as I have seen, in foreign lands,
+poor women, haggard, dirty, grown old before their youth was over,
+toiling up hill with baskets of foul manure upon their backs, you
+would have said, as I have said, "Oh for Madam How to cure that
+ignorance!  Oh for Lady Why to cure that barbarism!  Oh that Madam
+How would teach them that machinery must always be cheaper in the
+long run than human muscles and nerves!  Oh that Lady Why would
+teach them that a woman is the most precious thing on earth, and
+that if she be turned into a beast of burden, Lady Why--and Madam
+How likewise--will surely avenge the wrongs of their human
+sister!"  There, you do not quite know what I mean, and I do not
+care that you should.  It is good for little folk that big folk
+should now and then "talk over their heads," as the saying is, and
+make them feel how ignorant they are, and how many solemn and
+earnest questions there are in the world on which they must make
+up their minds some day, though not yet.  But now we will talk
+about the hay:  or rather do you and the rest go and play in the
+hay and gather it up, build forts of it, storm them, pull them
+down, build them up again, shout, laugh, and scream till you are
+hot and tired.  You will please Madam How thereby, and Lady Why
+likewise.
+
+How?
+
+Because Madam How naturally wants her work to succeed, and she is
+at work now making you.
+
+Making me?
+
+Of course.  Making a man of you, out of a boy.  And that can only
+be done by the life-blood which runs through and through you.  And
+the more you laugh and shout, the more pure air will pass into
+your blood, and make it red and healthy; and the more you romp and
+play--unless you overtire yourself--the quicker will that blood
+flow through all your limbs, to make bone and muscle, and help you
+to grow into a man.
+
+But why does Lady Why like to see us play?
+
+She likes to see you happy, as she likes to see the trees and
+birds happy.  For she knows well that there is no food, nor
+medicine either, like happiness.  If people are not happy enough,
+they are often tempted to do many wrong deeds, and to think many
+wrong thoughts:  and if by God's grace they know the laws of Lady
+Why, and keep from sin, still unhappiness, if it goes on too long,
+wears them out, body and mind; and they grow ill and die, of
+broken hearts, and broken brains, my child; and so at last, poor
+souls, find "Rest beneath the Cross."
+
+Children, too, who are unhappy; children who are bullied, and
+frightened, and kept dull and silent, never thrive.  Their bodies
+do not thrive; for they grow up weak.  Their minds do not thrive;
+for they grow up dull.  Their souls do not thrive; for they learn
+mean, sly, slavish ways, which God forbid you should ever learn.
+Well said the wise man, "The human plant, like the vegetables, can
+only flower in sunshine."
+
+So do you go, and enjoy yourself in the sunshine; but remember
+this--You know what happiness is.  Then if you wish to please Lady
+Why, and Lady Why's Lord and King likewise, you will never pass a
+little child without trying to make it happier, even by a passing
+smile.  And now be off, and play in the hay, and come back to me
+when you are tired.
+
+* * * * *
+
+Let us lie down at the foot of this old oak, and see what we can
+see.
+
+And hear what we can hear, too.  What is that humming all round
+us, now that the noisy mowing-machine has stopped?
+
+And as much softer than the noise of mowing-machine hum, as the
+machines which make it are more delicate and more curious.  Madam
+How is a very skilful workwoman, and has eyes which see deeper and
+clearer than all microscopes; as you would find, if you tried to
+see what makes that "Midsummer hum" of which the haymakers are so
+fond, because it promises fair weather.
+
+Why, it is only the gnats and flies.
+
+Only the gnats and flies?  You might study those gnats and flies
+for your whole life without finding out all--or more than a very
+little--about them.  I wish I knew how they move those tiny wings
+of theirs--a thousand times in a second, I dare say, some of them.
+I wish I knew how far they know that they are happy--for happy
+they must be, whether they know it or not.  I wish I knew how they
+live at all.  I wish I even knew how many sorts there are humming
+round us at this moment.
+
+How many kinds?  Three or four?
+
+More probably thirty or forty round this single tree.
+
+But why should there be so many kinds of living things?  Would not
+one or two have done just as well?
+
+Why, indeed?  Why should there not have been only one sort of
+butterfly, and he only of one colour, a plain brown, or a plain
+white?
+
+And why should there be so many sorts of birds, all robbing the
+garden at once?  Thrushes, and blackbirds, and sparrows, and
+chaffinches, and greenfinches, and bullfinches, and tomtits.
+
+And there are four kinds of tomtits round here, remember:  but we
+may go on with such talk for ever.  Wiser men than we have asked
+the same question:  but Lady Why will not answer them yet.
+However, there is another question, which Madam How seems inclined
+to answer just now, which is almost as deep and mysterious.
+
+What?
+
+HOW all these different kinds of things became different.
+
+Oh, do tell me!
+
+Not I.  You must begin at the beginning, before you can end at the
+end, or even make one step towards the end.
+
+What do you mean?
+
+You must learn the differences between things, before you can find
+out how those differences came about.  You must learn Madam How's
+alphabet before you can read her book.  And Madam How's alphabet
+of animals and plants is, Species, Kinds of things.  You must see
+which are like, and which unlike; what they are like in, and what
+they are unlike in.  You are beginning to do that with your
+collection of butterflies.  You like to arrange them, and those
+that are most like nearest to each other, and to compare them.
+You must do that with thousands of different kinds of things
+before you can read one page of Madam How's Natural History Book
+rightly.
+
+But it will take so much time and so much trouble.
+
+God grant that you may not spend more time on worse matters, and
+take more trouble over things which will profit you far less.  But
+so it must be, willy-nilly.  You must learn the alphabet if you
+mean to read.  And you must learn the value of the figures before
+you can do a sum.  Why, what would you think of any one who sat
+down to play at cards--for money too (which I hope and trust you
+never will do)--before he knew the names of the cards, and which
+counted highest, and took the other?
+
+Of course he would be very foolish.
+
+Just as foolish are those who make up "theories" (as they call
+them) about this world, and how it was made, before they have
+found out what the world is made of.  You might as well try to
+find out how this hay-field was made, without finding out first
+what the hay is made of.
+
+How the hay-field was made?  Was it not always a hay-field?
+
+Ah, yes; the old story, my child:  Was not the earth always just
+what it is now?  Let us see for ourselves whether this was always
+a hay-field.
+
+How?
+
+Just pick out all the different kinds of plants and flowers you
+can find round us here.  How many do you think there are?
+
+Oh--there seem to be four or five.
+
+Just as there were three or four kinds of flies in the air.  Pick
+them, child, and count.  Let us have facts.
+
+How many?  What! a dozen already?
+
+Yes--and here is another, and another.  Why, I have got I don't
+know how many.
+
+Why not?  Bring them here, and let us see.  Nine kinds of grasses,
+and a rush.  Six kinds of clovers and vetches; and besides,
+dandelion, and rattle, and oxeye, and sorrel, and plantain, and
+buttercup, and a little stitchwort, and pignut, and mouse-ear
+hawkweed, too, which nobody wants.
+
+Why?
+
+Because they are a sign that I am not a good farmer enough, and
+have not quite turned my Wild into Field.
+
+What do you mean?
+
+Look outside the boundary fence, at the moors and woods; they are
+forest, Wild--"Wald," as the Germans would call it.  Inside the
+fence is Field--"Feld," as the Germans would call it.  Guess why?
+
+Is it because the trees inside have been felled?
+
+Well, some say so, who know more than I.  But now go over the
+fence, and see how many of these plants you can find on the moor.
+
+Oh, I think I know.  I am so often on the moor.
+
+I think you would find more kinds outside than you fancy.  But
+what do you know?
+
+That beside some short fine grass about the cattle-paths, there
+are hardly any grasses on the moor save deer's hair and glade-
+grass; and all the rest is heath, and moss, and furze, and fern.
+
+Softly--not all; you have forgotten the bog plants; and there are
+(as I said) many more plants beside on the moor than you fancy.
+But we will look into that another time.  At all events, the
+plants outside are on the whole quite different from the hay-
+field.
+
+Of course:  that is what makes the field look green and the moor
+brown.
+
+Not a doubt.  They are so different, that they look like bits of
+two different continents.  Scrambling over the fence is like
+scrambling out of Europe into Australia.  Now, how was that
+difference made?  Think.  Don't guess, but think.  Why does the
+rich grass come up to the bank, and yet not spread beyond it?
+
+I suppose because it cannot get over.
+
+Not get over?  Would not the wind blow the seeds, and the birds
+carry them?  They do get over, in millions, I don't doubt, every
+summer.
+
+Then why do they not grow?
+
+Think.
+
+Is there any difference in the soil inside and out?
+
+A very good guess.  But guesses are no use without facts.  Look.
+
+Oh, I remember now.  I know now the soil of the field is brown,
+like the garden; and the soil of the moor all black and peaty.
+
+Yes.  But if you dig down two or three feet, you will find the
+soils of the moor and the field just the same.  So perhaps the top
+soils were once both alike.
+
+I know.
+
+Well, and what do you think about it now?  I want you to look and
+think.  I want every one to look and think.  Half the misery in
+the world comes first from not looking, and then from not
+thinking.  And I do not want you to be miserable.
+
+But shall I be miserable if I do not find out such little things
+as this.
+
+You will be miserable if you do not learn to understand little
+things:  because then you will not be able to understand great
+things when you meet them.  Children who are not trained to use
+their eyes and their common sense grow up the more miserable the
+cleverer they are.
+
+Why?
+
+Because they grow up what men call dreamers, and bigots, and
+fanatics, causing misery to themselves and to all who deal with
+them.  So I say again, think.
+
+Well, I suppose men must have altered the soil inside the bank.
+
+Well done.  But why do you think so?
+
+Because, of course, some one made the bank; and the brown soil
+only goes up to it.
+
+Well, that is something like common sense.  Now you will not say
+any more, as the cows or the butterflies might, that the hay-field
+was always there.
+
+And how did men change the soil?
+
+By tilling it with the plough, to sweeten it, and manuring it, to
+make it rich.
+
+And then did all these beautiful grasses grow up of themselves?
+
+You ought to know that they most likely did not.  You know the new
+enclosures?
+
+Yes.
+
+Well then, do rich grasses come up on them, now that they are
+broken up?
+
+Oh no, nothing but groundsel, and a few weeds.
+
+Just what, I dare say, came up here at first.  But this land was
+tilled for corn, for hundreds of years, I believe.  And just about
+one hundred years ago it was laid down in grass; that is, sown
+with grass seeds.
+
+And where did men get the grass seeds from?
+
+Ah, that is a long story; and one that shows our forefathers
+(though they knew nothing about railroads or electricity) were not
+such simpletons as some folks think.  The way it must have been
+done was this.  Men watched the natural pastures where cattle get
+fat on the wild grass, as they do in the Fens, and many other
+parts of England.  And then they saved the seeds of those
+fattening wild grasses, and sowed them in fresh spots.  Often they
+made mistakes.  They were careless, and got weeds among the seed--
+like the buttercups, which do so much harm to this pasture.  Or
+they sowed on soil which would not suit the seed, and it died.
+But at last, after many failures, they have grown so careful and
+so clever, that you may send to certain shops, saying what sort of
+soil yours is, and they will send you just the seeds which will
+grow there, and no other; and then you have a good pasture for as
+long as you choose to keep it good.
+
+And how is it kept good?
+
+Look at all those loads of hay, which are being carried off the
+field.  Do you think you can take all that away without putting
+anything in its place?
+
+Why not?
+
+If I took all the butter out of the churn, what must I do if I
+want more butter still?
+
+Put more cream in.
+
+So, if I want more grass to grow, I must put on the soil more of
+what grass is made of.
+
+But the butter don't grow, and the grass does.
+
+What does the grass grow in?
+
+The soil.
+
+Yes.  Just as the butter grows in the churn.  So you must put
+fresh grass-stuff continually into the soil, as you put fresh
+cream into the churn.  You have heard the farm men say, "That crop
+has taken a good deal out of the land"?
+
+Yes.
+
+Then they spoke exact truth.  What will that hay turn into by
+Christmas?  Can't you tell?  Into milk, of course, which you will
+drink; and into horseflesh too, which you will use.
+
+Use horseflesh?  Not eat it?
+
+No; we have not got as far as that.  We did not even make up our
+minds to taste the Cambridge donkey.  But every time the horse
+draws the carriage, he uses up so much muscle; and that muscle he
+must get back again by eating hay and corn; and that hay and corn
+must be put back again into the land by manure, or there will be
+all the less for the horse next year.  For one cannot eat one's
+cake and keep it too; and no more can one eat one's grass.
+
+So this field is a truly wonderful place.  It is no ugly pile of
+brick and mortar, with a tall chimney pouring out smoke and evil
+smells, with unhealthy, haggard people toiling inside.  Why do you
+look surprised?
+
+Because--because nobody ever said it was.  You mean a manufactory.
+
+Well, and this hay-field is a manufactory:  only like most of
+Madam How's workshops, infinitely more beautiful, as well as
+infinitely more crafty, than any manufactory of man's building.
+It is beautiful to behold, and healthy to work in; a joy and
+blessing alike to the eye, and the mind, and the body:  and yet it
+is a manufactory.
+
+But a manufactory of what?
+
+Of milk of course, and cows, and sheep, and horses; and of your
+body and mine--for we shall drink the milk and eat the meat.  And
+therefore it is a flesh and milk manufactory.  We must put into it
+every year yard-stuff, tank-stuff, guano, bones, and anything and
+everything of that kin, that Madam How may cook it for us into
+grass, and cook the grass again into milk and meat.  But if we
+don't give Madam How material to work on, we cannot expect her to
+work for us.  And what do you think will happen then?  She will
+set to work for herself.  The rich grasses will dwindle for want
+of ammonia (that is smelling salts), and the rich clovers for want
+of phosphates (that is bone-earth):  and in their places will come
+over the bank the old weeds and grass off the moor, which have not
+room to get in now, because the ground is coveted already.  They
+want no ammonia nor phosphates--at all events they have none, and
+that is why the cattle on the moor never get fat.  So they can
+live where these rich grasses cannot.  And then they will conquer
+and thrive; and the Field will turn into Wild once more.
+
+Ah, my child, thank God for your forefathers, when you look over
+that boundary mark.  For the difference between the Field and the
+Wild is the difference between the old England of Madam How's
+making, and the new England which she has taught man to make,
+carrying on what she had only begun and had not time to finish.
+
+That moor is a pattern bit left to show what the greater part of
+this land was like for long ages after it had risen out of the
+sea; when there was little or nothing on the flat upper moors save
+heaths, and ling, and club-mosses, and soft gorse, and needle-
+whin, and creeping willows; and furze and fern upon the brows; and
+in the bottoms oak and ash, beech and alder, hazel and mountain
+ash, holly and thorn, with here and there an aspen or a buckthorn
+(berry-bearing alder as you call it), and everywhere--where he
+could thrust down his long root, and thrust up his long shoots--
+that intruding conqueror and insolent tyrant, the bramble.  There
+were sedges and rushes, too, in the bogs, and coarse grass on the
+forest pastures--or "leas" as we call them to this day round here-
+-but no real green fields; and, I suspect, very few gay flowers,
+save in spring the sheets of golden gorse, and in summer the
+purple heather.  Such was old England--or rather, such was this
+land before it was England; a far sadder, damper, poorer land than
+now.  For one man or one cow or sheep which could have lived on it
+then, a hundred can live now.  And yet, what it was once, that it
+might become again,--it surely would round here, if this brave
+English people died out of it, and the land was left to itself
+once more.
+
+What would happen then, you may guess for yourself, from what you
+see happen whenever the land is left to itself, as it is in the
+wood above.  In that wood you can still see the grass ridges and
+furrows which show that it was once ploughed and sown by man;
+perhaps as late as the time of Henry the Eighth, when a great deal
+of poor land, as you will read some day, was thrown out of
+tillage, to become forest and down once more.  And what is the
+mount now?  A jungle of oak and beech, cherry and holly, young and
+old all growing up together, with the mountain ash and bramble and
+furze coming up so fast beneath them, that we have to cut the
+paths clear again year by year.  Why, even the little cow-wheat, a
+very old-world plant, which only grows in ancient woods, has found
+its way back again, I know not whence, and covers the open spaces
+with its pretty yellow and white flowers.  Man had conquered this
+mount, you see, from Madam How, hundreds of years ago.  And she
+always lets man conquer her, because Lady Why wishes man to
+conquer:  only he must have a fair fight with Madam How first, and
+try his strength against hers to the utmost.  So man conquered the
+wood for a while; and it became cornfield instead of forest:  but
+he was not strong and wise enough three hundred years ago to keep
+what he had conquered; and back came Madam How, and took the place
+into her own hands, and bade the old forest trees and plants come
+back again--as they would come if they were not stopped year by
+year, down from the wood, over the pastures--killing the rich
+grasses as they went, till they met another forest coming up from
+below, and fought it for many a year, till both made peace, and
+lived quietly side by side for ages.
+
+Another forest coming up from below?  Where would it come from?
+
+From where it is now.  Come down and look along the brook, and
+every drain and grip which runs into the brook.  What is here?
+
+Seedling alders, and some withies among them.
+
+Very well.  You know how we pull these alders up, and cut them
+down, and yet they continually come again.  Now, if we and all
+human beings were to leave this pasture for a few hundred years,
+would not those alders increase into a wood?  Would they not kill
+the grass, and spread right and left, seeding themselves more and
+more as the grass died, and left the ground bare, till they met
+the oaks and beeches coming down the hill?  And then would begin a
+great fight, for years and years, between oak and beech against
+alder and willow.
+
+But how can trees fight?  Could they move or beat each other with
+their boughs?
+
+Not quite that; though they do beat each other with their boughs,
+fiercely enough, in a gale of wind; and then the trees who have
+strong and stiff boughs wound those who have brittle and limp
+boughs, and so hurt them, and if the storms come often enough,
+kill them.  But among these trees in a sheltered valley the larger
+and stronger would kill the weaker and smaller by simply
+overshadowing their tops, and starving their roots; starving them,
+indeed, so much when they grow very thick, that the poor little
+acorns, and beech mast, and alder seeds would not be able to
+sprout at all.  So they would fight, killing each other's
+children, till the war ended--I think I can guess how.
+
+How?
+
+The beeches are as dainty as they are beautiful; and they do not
+like to get their feet wet.  So they would venture down the hill
+only as far as the dry ground lasts, and those who tried to grow
+any lower would die.  But the oaks are hardy, and do not care much
+where they grow.  So they would fight their way down into the wet
+ground among the alders and willows, till they came to where their
+enemies were so thick and tall, that the acorns as they fell could
+not sprout in the darkness.  And so you would have at last, along
+the hill-side, a forest of beech and oak, lower down a forest of
+oak and alder, and along the stream-side alders and willows only.
+And that would be a very fair example of the great law of the
+struggle for existence, which causes the competition of species.
+
+What is that?
+
+Madam How is very stern, though she is always perfectly just; and
+therefore she makes every living thing fight for its life, and
+earn its bread, from its birth till its death; and rewards it
+exactly according to its deserts, and neither more nor less.
+
+And the competition of species means, that each thing, and kind of
+things, has to compete against the things round it; and to see
+which is the stronger; and the stronger live, and breed, and
+spread, and the weaker die out.
+
+But that is very hard.
+
+I know it, my child, I know it.  But so it is.  And Madam How, no
+doubt, would be often very clumsy and very cruel, without meaning
+it, because she never sees beyond her own nose, or thinks at all
+about the consequences of what she is doing.  But Lady Why, who
+does think about consequences, is her mistress, and orders her
+about for ever.  And Lady Why is, I believe, as loving as she is
+wise; and therefore we must trust that she guides this great war
+between living things, and takes care that Madam How kills nothing
+which ought not to die, and takes nothing away without putting
+something more beautiful and something more useful in its place;
+and that even if England were, which God forbid, overrun once more
+with forests and bramble-brakes, that too would be of use somehow,
+somewhere, somewhen, in the long ages which are to come hereafter.
+
+And you must remember, too, that since men came into the world
+with rational heads on their shoulders, Lady Why has been handing
+over more and more of Madam How's work to them, and some of her
+own work too:  and bids them to put beautiful and useful things in
+the place of ugly and useless ones; so that now it is men's own
+fault if they do not use their wits, and do by all the world what
+they have done by these pastures--change it from a barren moor
+into a rich hay-field, by copying the laws of Madam How, and
+making grass compete against heath.  But you look thoughtful:
+what is it you want to know?
+
+Why, you say all living things must fight and scramble for what
+they can get from each other:  and must not I too?  For I am a
+living thing.
+
+Ah, that is the old question, which our Lord answered long ago,
+and said, "Be not anxious what ye shall eat or what ye shall
+drink, or wherewithal you shall be clothed.  For after all these
+things do the heathen seek, and your Heavenly Father knoweth that
+ye have need of these things.  But seek ye first the kingdom of
+God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to
+you."  A few, very few, people have taken that advice.  But they
+have been just the salt of the earth, which has kept mankind from
+decaying.
+
+But what has that to do with it?
+
+See.  You are a living thing, you say.  Are you a plant?
+
+No.
+
+Are you an animal?
+
+I do not know.  Yes.  I suppose I am.  I eat, and drink, and
+sleep, just as dogs and cats do.
+
+Yes.  There is no denying that.  No one knew that better than St.
+Paul when he told men that they had a flesh; that is, a body, and
+an animal's nature in them.  But St. Paul told them--of course he
+was not the first to say so, for all the wise heathens have known
+that--that there was something more in us, which he called a
+spirit.  Some call it now the moral sentiment, some one thing,
+some another, but we will keep to the old word:  we shall not find
+a better.
+
+Yes, I know that I have a spirit, a soul.
+
+Better to say that you are a spirit.  But what does St. Paul say?
+That our spirit is to conquer our flesh, and keep it down.  That
+the man in us, in short, which is made in the likeness of God, is
+to conquer the animal in us, which is made in the likeness of the
+dog and the cat, and sometimes (I fear) in the likeness of the ape
+or the pig.  You would not wish to be like a cat, much less like
+an ape or a pig?
+
+Of course not.
+
+Then do not copy them, by competing and struggling for existence
+against other people.
+
+What do you mean?
+
+Did you never watch the pigs feeding?
+
+Yes, and how they grudge and quarrel, and shove each other's noses
+out of the trough, and even bite each other because they are so
+jealous which shall get most.
+
+That is it.  And how the biggest pig drives the others away, and
+would starve them while he got fat, if the man did not drive him
+off in his turn.
+
+Oh, yes; I know.
+
+Then no wiser than those pigs are worldly men who compete, and
+grudge, and struggle with each other, which shall get most money,
+most fame, most power over their fellow-men.  They will tell you,
+my child, that that is the true philosophy, and the true wisdom;
+that competition is the natural law of society, and the source of
+wealth and prosperity.  Do not you listen to them.  That is the
+wisdom of this world, which the flesh teaches the animals; and
+those who follow it, like the animals, will perish.  Such men are
+not even as wise as Sweep the retriever.
+
+Not as wise as Sweep?
+
+Not they.  Sweep will not take away Victor's bone, though he is
+ten times as big as Victor, and could kill him in a moment; and
+when he catches a rabbit, does he eat it himself?
+
+Of course not; he brings it and lays it down at our feet.
+
+Because he likes better to do his duty, and be praised for it,
+than to eat the rabbit, dearly as he longs to eat it.
+
+But he is only an animal.  Who taught him to be generous, and
+dutiful, and faithful?
+
+Who, indeed!  Not we, you know that, for he has grown up with us
+since a puppy.  How he learnt it, and his parents before him, is a
+mystery, of which we can only say, God has taught them, we know
+not how.  But see what has happened--that just because dogs have
+learnt not to be selfish and to compete--that is, have become
+civilised and tame--therefore we let them live with us, and love
+them.  Because they try to be good in their simple way, therefore
+they too have all things added to them, and live far happier, and
+more comfortable lives than the selfish wolf and fox.
+
+But why have not all animals found out that?
+
+I cannot tell:  there may be wise animals and foolish animals, as
+there are wise and foolish men.  Indeed there are.  I see a very
+wise animal there, who never competes; for she has learned
+something of the golden lesson--that it is more blessed to give
+than to receive; and she acts on what she has learnt, all day
+long.
+
+Which do you mean?  Why, that is a bee.
+
+Yes, it is a bee:  and I wish I were as worthy in my place as that
+bee is in hers.  I wish I could act up as well as she does to the
+true wisdom, which is self-sacrifice.  For whom is that bee
+working?  For herself?  If that was all, she only needs to suck
+the honey as she goes.  But she is storing up the wax under her
+stomach, and bee-bread in her thighs--for whom?  Not for herself
+only, or even for her own children:  but for the children of
+another bee, her queen.  For them she labours all day long, builds
+for them, feeds them, nurses them, spends her love and cunning on
+them.  So does that ant on the path.  She is carrying home that
+stick to build for other ants' children.  So do the white ants in
+the tropics.  They have learnt not to compete, but to help each
+other; not to be selfish, but to sacrifice themselves; and
+therefore they are strong.
+
+But you told me once that ants would fight and plunder each
+other's nests.  And once we saw two hives of bees fighting in the
+air, and falling dead by dozens.
+
+My child, do not men fight, and kill each other by thousands with
+sharp shot and cold steel, because, though they have learnt the
+virtue of patriotism, they have not yet learnt that of humanity?
+We must not blame the bees and ants if they are no wiser than men.
+At least they are wise enough to stand up for their country, that
+is, their hive, and work for it, and die for it, if need be; and
+that makes them strong.
+
+But how does that make them strong?
+
+How, is a deep question, and one I can hardly answer yet.  But
+that it has made them so there is no doubt.  Look at the solitary
+bees--the governors as we call them, who live in pairs, in little
+holes in the banks.  How few of them there are; and they never
+seem to increase in numbers.  Then look at the hive bees, how,
+just because they are civilised,--that is, because they help each
+other, and feed each other, instead of being solitary and
+selfish,--they breed so fast, and get so much food, that if they
+were not killed for their honey, they would soon become a
+nuisance, and drive us out of the parish.
+
+But then we give them their hives ready made.
+
+True.  But in old forest countries, where trees decay and grow
+hollow, the bees breed in them.
+
+Yes.  I remember the bee tree in the fir avenue.
+
+Well then, in many forests in hot countries the bees swarm in
+hollow trees; and they, and the ants, and the white ants, have it
+all their own way, and are lords and masters, driving the very
+wild beasts before them, while the ants and white ants eat up all
+gardens, and plantations, and clothes, and furniture; till it is a
+serious question whether in some hot countries man will ever be
+able to settle, so strong have the ants grown, by ages of
+civilisation, and not competing against their brothers and
+sisters.
+
+But may I not compete for prizes against the other boys?
+
+Well, there is no harm in that; for you do not harm the others,
+even if you win.  They will have learnt all the more, while trying
+for the prize; and so will you, even if you don't get it.  But I
+tell you fairly, trying for prizes is only fit for a child; and
+when you become a man, you must put away childish things--
+competition among the rest.
+
+But surely I may try to be better and wiser and more learned than
+everybody else?
+
+My dearest child, why try for that?  Try to be as good, and wise,
+and learned as you can, and if you find any man, or ten thousand
+men, superior to you, thank God for it.  Do you think that there
+can be too much wisdom in the world?
+
+Of course not:  but I should like to be the wisest man in it.
+
+Then you would only have the heaviest burden of all men on your
+shoulders.
+
+Why?
+
+Because you would be responsible for more foolish people than any
+one else.  Remember what wise old Moses said, when some one came
+and told him that certain men in the camp were prophesying--"Would
+God all the Lord's people did prophesy!"  Yes; it would have saved
+Moses many a heartache, and many a sleepless night, if all the
+Jews had been wise as he was, and wiser still.  So do not you
+compete with good and wise men, but simply copy them:  and
+whatever you do, do not compete with the wolves, and the apes, and
+the swine of this world; for that is a game at which you are sure
+to be beaten.
+
+Why?
+
+Because Lady Why, if she loves you (as I trust she does), will
+take care that you are beaten, lest you should fancy it was really
+profitable to live like a cunning sort of animal, and not like a
+true man.  And how she will do that I can tell you.  She will take
+care that you always come across a worse man than you are trying
+to be,--a more apish man, who can tumble and play monkey-tricks
+for people's amusement better than you can; or a more swinish man,
+who can get at more of the pig's-wash than you can; or a more
+wolfish man, who will eat you up if you do not get out of his way;
+and so she will disappoint and disgust you, my child, with that
+greedy, selfish, vain animal life, till you turn round and see
+your mistake, and try to live the true human life, which also is
+divine;--to be just and honourable, gentle and forgiving, generous
+and useful--in one word, to fear God, and keep His commandments:
+and as you live that life, you will find that, by the eternal laws
+of Lady Why, all other things will be added to you; that people
+will be glad to know you, glad to help you, glad to employ you,
+because they see that you will be of use to them, and will do them
+no harm.  And if you meet (as you will meet) with people better
+and wiser than yourself, then so much the better for you; for they
+will love you, and be glad to teach you when they see that you are
+living the unselfish and harmless life; and that you come to them,
+not as foolish Critias came to Socrates, to learn political
+cunning, and become a selfish and ambitious tyrant, but as wise
+Plato came, that he might learn the laws of Lady Why, and love
+them for her sake, and teach them to all mankind.  And so you,
+like the plants and animals, will get your deserts exactly,
+without competing and struggling for existence as they do.
+
+And all this has come out of looking at the hay-field and the wild
+moor.
+
+Why not?  There is an animal in you, and there is a man in you.
+If the animal gets the upper hand, all your character will fall
+back into wild useless moor; if the man gets the upper hand, all
+your character will be cultivated into rich and fertile field.
+Choose.
+
+Now come down home.  The haymakers are resting under the hedge.
+The horses are dawdling home to the farm.  The sun is getting low,
+and the shadows long.  Come home, and go to bed while the house is
+fragrant with the smell of hay, and dream that you are still
+playing among the haycocks.  When you grow old, you will have
+other and sadder dreams.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI--THE WORLD'S END
+
+
+
+Hullo! hi! wake up.  Jump out of bed, and come to the window, and
+see where you are.
+
+What a wonderful place!
+
+So it is:  though it is only poor old Ireland.  Don't you
+recollect that when we started I told you we were going to
+Ireland, and through it to the World's End; and here we are now
+safe at the end of the old world, and beyond us the great
+Atlantic, and beyond that again, thousands of miles away, the new
+world, which will be rich and prosperous, civilised and noble,
+thousands of years hence, when this old world, it may be, will be
+dead, and little children there will be reading in their history
+books of Ancient England and of Ancient France, as you now read of
+Greece and Rome.
+
+But what a wonderful place it is!  What are those great green
+things standing up in the sky, all over purple ribs and bars, with
+their tops hid in the clouds?
+
+Those are mountains; the bones of some old world, whose poor bare
+sides Madam How is trying to cover with rich green grass.
+
+And how far off are they?
+
+How I should like to walk up to the top of that one which looks
+quite close.
+
+You will find it a long walk up there; three miles, I dare say,
+over black bogs and banks of rock, and up corries and cliffs which
+you could not climb.  There are plenty of cows on that mountain:
+and yet they look so small, you could not see them, nor I either,
+without a glass.  That long white streak, zigzagging down the
+mountain side, is a roaring cataract of foam five hundred feet
+high, full now with last night's rain; but by this afternoon it
+will have dwindled to a little thread; and to-morrow, when you get
+up, if no more rain has come down, it will be gone.  Madam How
+works here among the mountains swiftly and hugely, and sometimes
+terribly enough; as you shall see when you have had your
+breakfast, and come down to the bridge with me.
+
+But what a beautiful place it is!  Flowers and woods and a lawn;
+and what is that great smooth patch in the lawn just under the
+window?
+
+Is it an empty flower-bed?
+
+Ah, thereby hangs a strange tale.  We will go and look at it after
+breakfast, and then you shall see with your own eyes one of the
+wonders which I have been telling you of.
+
+And what is that shining between the trees?
+
+Water.
+
+Is it a lake?
+
+Not a lake, though there are plenty round here; that is salt
+water, not fresh.  Look away to the right, and you see it through
+the opening of the woods again and again:  and now look above the
+woods.  You see a faint blue line, and gray and purple lumps like
+clouds, which rest upon it far away.  That, child, is the great
+Atlantic Ocean, and those are islands in the far west.  The water
+which washes the bottom of the lawn was but a few months ago
+pouring out of the Gulf of Mexico, between the Bahamas and
+Florida, and swept away here as the great ocean river of warm
+water which we call the Gulf Stream, bringing with it out of the
+open ocean the shoals of mackerel, and the porpoises and whales
+which feed upon them.  Some fine afternoon we will run down the
+bay and catch strange fishes, such as you never saw before, and
+very likely see a living whale.
+
+What? such a whale as they get whalebone from, and which eats sea-
+moths?
+
+No, they live far north, in the Arctic circle; these are
+grampuses, and bottle-noses, which feed on fish; not so big as the
+right whales, but quite big enough to astonish you, if one comes
+up and blows close to the boat.  Get yourself dressed and come
+down, and then we will go out; we shall have plenty to see and
+talk of at every step.
+
+Now, you have finished your breakfast at last, so come along, and
+we shall see what we shall see.  First run out across the gravel,
+and scramble up that bank of lawn, and you will see what you
+fancied was an empty flower-bed.
+
+Why, it is all hard rock.
+
+Ah, you are come into the land of rocks now:  out of the land of
+sand and gravel; out of a soft young corner of the world into a
+very hard, old, weather-beaten corner; and you will see rocks
+enough, and too many for the poor farmers, before you go home
+again.
+
+But how beautifully smooth and flat the rock is:  and yet it is
+all rounded.
+
+What is it like?
+
+Like--like the half of a shell.
+
+Not badly said, but think again.
+
+Like--like--I know what it is like.  Like the back of some great
+monster peeping up through the turf.
+
+You have got it.  Such rocks as these are called in Switzerland
+"roches moutonnees," because they are, people fancy, like sheep's
+backs.  Now look at the cracks and layers in it.  They run across
+the stone; they have nothing to do with the shape of it.  You see
+that?
+
+Yes:  but here are cracks running across them, all along the
+stone, till the turf hides them.
+
+Look at them again; they are no cracks; they do not go into the
+stone.
+
+I see.  They are scratched; something like those on the elder-stem
+at home, where the cats sharpen their claws.  But it would take a
+big cat to make them.
+
+Do you recollect what I told you of Madam How's hand, more
+flexible than any hand of man, and yet strong enough to grind the
+mountains into paste?
+
+I know.  Ice! ice! ice!  But are these really ice-marks?
+
+Child, on the place where we now stand, over rich lawns, and warm
+woods, and shining lochs, lay once on a time hundreds, it may be
+thousands, of feet of solid ice, crawling off yonder mountain-tops
+into the ocean there outside; and this is one of its tracks.  See
+how the scratches all point straight down the valley, and straight
+out to sea.  Those mountains are 2000 feet high:  but they were
+much higher once; for the ice has planed the tops off them.  Then,
+it seems to me, the ice sank, and left the mountains standing out
+of it about half their height, and at that level it stayed, till
+it had planed down all those lower moors of smooth bare rock
+between us and the Western ocean; and then it sank again, and
+dwindled back, leaving moraines (that is, heaps of dirt and
+stones) all up these valleys here and there, till at the last it
+melted all away, and poor old Ireland became fit to live in again.
+We will go down the bay some day and look at those moraines, some
+of them quite hills of earth, and then you will see for yourself
+how mighty a chisel the ice-chisel was, and what vast heaps of
+chips it has left behind.  Now then, down over the lawn towards
+the bridge.  Listen to the river, louder and louder every step we
+take.
+
+What a roar!  Is there a waterfall there?
+
+No.  It is only the flood.  And underneath the roar of that flood,
+do you not hear a deeper note--a dull rumbling, as if from
+underground?
+
+Yes.  What is it?
+
+The rolling of great stones under water, which are being polished
+against each other, as they hurry toward the sea.  Now, up on the
+parapet of the bridge.  I will hold you tight.  Look and see Madam
+How's rain-spade at work.  Look at the terrible yellow torrent
+below us, almost filling up the arches of the bridge, and leaping
+high in waves and crests of foam.
+
+Oh, the bridge is falling into the water!
+
+Not a bit.  You are not accustomed to see water running below you
+at ten miles an hour.  Never mind that feeling.  It will go off in
+a few seconds.  Look; the water is full six feet up the trunks of
+the trees; over the grass and the king fern, and the tall purple
+loose-strife -
+
+Oh!  Here comes a tree dancing down!
+
+And there are some turfs which have been cut on the mountain.  And
+there is a really sad sight.  Look what comes now.
+
+One--two--three.
+
+Why, they are sheep.
+
+Yes.  And a sad loss they will be to some poor fellow in the glen
+above.
+
+And oh!  Look at the pig turning round and round solemnly in the
+corner under the rock.  Poor piggy!  He ought to have been at home
+safe in his stye, and not wandering about the hills.  And what are
+these coming now?
+
+Butter firkins, I think.  Yes.  This is a great flood.  It is well
+if there are no lives lost.
+
+But is it not cruel of Madam How to make such floods?
+
+Well--let us ask one of these men who are looking over the bridge.
+
+Why, what does he say?  I cannot understand one word.  Is he
+talking Irish?
+
+Irish-English at least:  but what he said was, that it was a
+mighty fine flood entirely, praised be God; and would help on the
+potatoes and oats after the drought, and set the grass growing
+again on the mountains.
+
+And what is he saying now?
+
+That the river will be full of salmon and white trout after this.
+
+What does he mean?
+
+That under our feet now, if we could see through the muddy water,
+dozens of salmon and sea-trout are running up from the sea.
+
+What! up this furious stream?
+
+Yes.  What would be death to you is pleasure and play to them.  Up
+they are going, to spawn in the little brooks among the mountains;
+and all of them are the best of food, fattened on the herrings and
+sprats in the sea outside, Madam How's free gift, which does not
+cost man a farthing, save the expense of nets and rods to catch
+them.
+
+How can that be?
+
+I will give you a bit of political economy.  Suppose a pound of
+salmon is worth a shilling; and a pound of beef is worth a
+shilling likewise.  Before we can eat the beef, it has cost
+perhaps tenpence to make that pound of beef out of turnips and
+grass and oil-cake; and so the country is only twopence a pound
+richer for it.  But Mr. Salmon has made himself out of what he
+eats in the sea, and so has cost nothing; and the shilling a pound
+is all clear gain.  There--you don't quite understand that piece
+of political economy.  Indeed, it is only in the last two or three
+years that older heads than yours have got to understand it, and
+have passed the wise new salmon laws, by which the rivers will be
+once more as rich with food as the land is, just as they were
+hundreds of years ago.  But now, look again at the river.  What do
+you think makes it so yellow and muddy?
+
+Dirt, of course.
+
+And where does that come from?
+
+Off the mountains?
+
+Yes.  Tons on tons of white mud are being carried down past us
+now; and where will they go?
+
+Into the sea?
+
+Yes, and sink there in the still water, to make new strata at the
+bottom; and perhaps in them, ages hence, some one will find the
+bones of those sheep, and of poor Mr. Pig too, fossil -
+
+And the butter firkins too.  What fun to find a fossil butter
+firkin!
+
+But now lift up your eyes to the jagged mountain crests, and their
+dark sides all laced with silver streams.  Out of every crack and
+cranny there aloft, the rain is bringing down dirt, and stones
+too, which have been split off by the winter's frosts, deepening
+every little hollow, and sharpening every peak, and making the
+hills more jagged and steep year by year.
+
+When the ice went away, the hills were all scraped smooth and
+round by the glaciers, like the flat rock upon the lawn; and ugly
+enough they must have looked, most like great brown buns.  But
+ever since then, Madam How has been scooping them out again by her
+water-chisel into deep glens, mighty cliffs, sharp peaks, such as
+you see aloft, and making the old hills beautiful once more.  Why,
+even the Alps in Switzerland have been carved out by frost and
+rain, out of some great flat.  The very peak of the Matterhorn, of
+which you have so often seen a picture, is but one single point
+left of some enormous bun of rock.  All the rest has been carved
+away by rain and frost; and some day the Matterhorn itself will be
+carved away, and its last stone topple into the glacier at its
+foot.  See, as we have been talking, we have got into the woods.
+
+Oh, what beautiful woods, just like our own.
+
+Not quite.  There are some things growing here which do not grow
+at home, as you will soon see.  And there are no rocks at home,
+either, as there are here.
+
+How strange, to see trees growing out of rocks!  How do their
+roots get into the stone?
+
+There is plenty of rich mould in the cracks for them to feed on -
+
+
+"Health to the oak of the mountains; he trusts to the might of the
+rock-clefts.
+Deeply he mines, and in peace feeds on the wealth of the stone."
+
+
+How many sorts of trees there are--oak, and birch and nuts, and
+mountain-ash, and holly and furze, and heather.
+
+And if you went to some of the islands in the lake up in the glen,
+you would find wild arbutus--strawberry-tree, as you call it.  We
+will go and get some one day or other.
+
+How long and green the grass is, even on the rocks, and the ferns,
+and the moss, too.  Everything seems richer here than at home.
+
+Of course it is.  You are here in the land of perpetual spring,
+where frost and snow seldom, or never comes.
+
+Oh, look at the ferns under this rock!  I must pick some.
+
+Pick away.  I will warrant you do not pick all the sorts.
+
+Yes.  I have got them all now.
+
+Not so hasty, child; there is plenty of a beautiful fern growing
+among that moss, which you have passed over.  Look here.
+
+What! that little thing a fern!
+
+Hold it up to the light, and see.
+
+What a lovely little thing, like a transparent sea-weed, hung on
+black wire.  What is it?
+
+Film fern, Hymenophyllum.  But what are you staring at now, with
+all your eyes?
+
+Oh! that rock covered with green stars and a cloud of little white
+and pink flowers growing out of them.
+
+Aha! my good little dog!  I thought you would stand to that game
+when you found it.
+
+What is it, though?
+
+You must answer that yourself.  You have seen it a hundred times
+before.
+
+Why, it is London Pride, that grows in the garden at home.
+
+Of course it is:  but the Irish call it St. Patrick's cabbage;
+though it got here a long time before St. Patrick; and St. Patrick
+must have been very short of garden-stuff if he ever ate it.
+
+But how did it get here from London?
+
+No, no.  How did it get to London from hence?  For from this
+country it came.  I suppose the English brought it home in Queen
+Bess's or James the First's time.
+
+But if it is wild here, and will grow so well in England, why do
+we not find it wild in England too?
+
+For the same reason that there are no toads or snakes in Ireland.
+They had not got as far as Ireland before Ireland was parted off
+from England.  And St. Patrick's cabbage, and a good many other
+plants, had not got as far as England.
+
+But why?
+
+Why, I don't know.  But this I know:  that when Madam How makes a
+new sort of plant or animal, she starts it in one single place,
+and leaves it to take care of itself and earn its own living--as
+she does you and me and every one--and spread from that place all
+round as far as it can go.  So St. Patrick's cabbage got into this
+south-west of Ireland, long, long ago; and was such a brave sturdy
+little plant, that it clambered up to the top of the highest
+mountains, and over all the rocks.  But when it got to the rich
+lowlands to the eastward, in county Cork, it found all the ground
+taken up already with other plants; and as they had enough to do
+to live themselves, they would not let St. Patrick's cabbage
+settle among them; and it had to be content with living here in
+the far-west--and, what was very sad, had no means of sending word
+to its brothers and sisters in the Pyrenees how it was getting on.
+
+What do you mean?  Are you making fun of me?
+
+Not the least.  I am only telling you a very strange story, which
+is literally true.  Come, and sit down on this bench.  You can't
+catch that great butterfly, he is too strong on the wing for you.
+
+But oh, what a beautiful one!
+
+Yes, orange and black, silver and green, a glorious creature.  But
+you may see him at home sometimes:  that plant close to you, you
+cannot see at home.
+
+Why, it is only great spurge, such as grows in the woods at home.
+
+No.  It is Irish spurge which grows here, and sometimes in
+Devonshire, and then again in the west of Europe, down to the
+Pyrenees.  Don't touch it.  Our wood spurge is poisonous enough,
+but this is worse still; if you get a drop of its milk on your lip
+or eye, you will be in agonies for half a day.  That is the evil
+plant with which the poachers kill the salmon.
+
+How do they do that?
+
+When the salmon are spawning up in the little brooks, and the
+water is low, they take that spurge, and grind it between two
+stones under water, and let the milk run down into the pool; and
+at that all the poor salmon turn up dead.  Then comes the water-
+bailiff, and catches the poachers.  Then comes the policeman, with
+his sword at his side and his truncheon under his arm:  and then
+comes a "cheap journey" to Tralee Gaol, in which those foolish
+poachers sit and reconsider themselves, and determine not to break
+the salmon laws--at least till next time.
+
+But why is it that this spurge, and St. Patrick's cabbage, grow
+only here in the west?  If they got here of themselves, where did
+they come from?  All outside there is sea; and they could not
+float over that.
+
+Come, I say, and sit down on this bench, and I will tell you a
+tale,--the story of the Old Atlantis, the sunken land in the far
+West.  Old Plato, the Greek, told legends of it, which you will
+read some day; and now it seems as if those old legends had some
+truth in them, after all.  We are standing now on one of the last
+remaining scraps of the old Atlantic land.  Look down the bay.  Do
+you see far away, under, the mountains, little islands, long and
+low?
+
+Oh, yes.
+
+Some of these are old slate, like the mountains; others are
+limestone; bits of the old coral-reef to the west of Ireland which
+became dry land.
+
+I know.  You told me about it.
+
+Then that land, which is all eaten up by the waves now, once
+joined Ireland to Cornwall, and to Spain, and to the Azores, and I
+suspect to the Cape of Good Hope, and what is stranger, to
+Labrador, on the coast of North America.
+
+Oh!  How can you know that?
+
+Listen, and I will give you your first lesson in what I call Bio-
+geology.
+
+What a long word!
+
+If you can find a shorter one I shall be very much obliged to you,
+for I hate long words.  But what it means is,--Telling how the
+land has changed in shape, by the plants and animals upon it.  And
+if you ever read (as you will) Mr. Wallace's new book on the
+Indian Archipelago, you will see what wonderful discoveries men
+may make about such questions if they will but use their common
+sense.  You know the common pink heather--ling, as we call it?
+
+Of course.
+
+Then that ling grows, not only here and in the north and west of
+Europe, but in the Azores too; and, what is more strange, in
+Labrador.  Now, as ling can neither swim nor fly, does not common
+sense tell you that all those countries were probably joined
+together in old times?
+
+Well:  but it seems so strange.
+
+So it is, my child; and so is everything.  But, as the fool says
+in Shakespeare -
+
+
+"A long time ago the world began,
+With heigh ho, the wind and the rain."
+
+
+And the wind and the rain have made strange work with the poor old
+world ever since.  And that is about all that we, who are not very
+much wiser than Shakespeare's fool, can say about the matter.  But
+again--the London Pride grows here, and so does another saxifrage
+very like it, which we call Saxifraga Geum.  Now, when I saw those
+two plants growing in the Western Pyrenees, between France and
+Spain, and with them the beautiful blue butterwort, which grows in
+these Kerry bogs--we will go and find some--what could I say but
+that Spain and Ireland must have been joined once?
+
+I suppose it must be so.
+
+Again.  There is a little pink butterwort here in the bogs, which
+grows, too, in dear old Devonshire and Cornwall; and also in the
+south-west of Scotland.  Now, when I found that too, in the bogs
+near Biarritz, close to the Pyrenees, and knew that it stretched
+away along the Spanish coast, and into Portugal, what could my
+common sense lead me to say but that Scotland, and Ireland, and
+Cornwall, and Spain were all joined once?  Those are only a few
+examples.  I could give you a dozen more.  For instance, on an
+island away there to the west, and only in one spot, there grows a
+little sort of lily, which is found I believe in Brittany, and on
+the Spanish and Portuguese heaths, and even in North-west Africa.
+And that Africa and Spain were joined not so very long ago at the
+Straits of Gibraltar there is no doubt at all.
+
+But where did the Mediterranean Sea run out then?
+
+Perhaps it did not run out at all; but was a salt-water lake, like
+the Caspian, or the Dead Sea.  Perhaps it ran out over what is now
+the Sahara, the great desert of sand, for, that was a sea-bottom
+not long ago.
+
+But then, how was this land of Atlantis joined to the Cape of Good
+Hope?
+
+I cannot say how, or when either.  But this is plain:  the place
+in the world where the most beautiful heaths grow is the Cape of
+Good Hope?  You know I showed you Cape heaths once at the nursery
+gardener's at home.
+
+Oh yes, pink, and yellow, and white; so much larger than ours.
+
+Then it seems (I only say it seems) as if there must have been
+some land once to the westward, from which the different sorts of
+heath spread south-eastward to the Cape, and north-eastward into
+Europe.  And that they came north-eastward into Europe seems
+certain; for there are no heaths in America or Asia.
+
+But how north-eastward?
+
+Think.  Stand with your face to the south and think.  If a thing
+comes from the south-west--from there, it must go to the north-
+east-towards there.  Must it not?
+
+Oh yes, I see.
+
+Now then--The farther you go south-west, towards Spain, the more
+kinds of heath there are, and the handsomer; as if their original
+home, from which they started, was somewhere down there.
+
+More sorts!  What sorts?
+
+How many sorts of heath have we at home?
+
+Three, of course:  ling, and purple heath, and bottle heath.
+
+And there are no more in all England, or Wales, or Scotland,
+except-- Now, listen.  In the very farthest end of Cornwall there
+are two more sorts, the Cornish heath and the Orange-bell; and
+they say (though I never saw it) that the Orange-bell grows near
+Bournemouth.
+
+Well.  That is south and west too.
+
+So it is:  but that makes five heaths.  Now in the south and west
+of Ireland all these five heaths grow, and two more:  the great
+Irish heath, with purple bells, and the Mediterranean heath, which
+flowers in spring.
+
+Oh, I know them.  They grow in the Rhododendron beds at home.
+
+Of course.  Now again.  If you went down to Spain, you would find
+all those seven heaths, and other sorts with them, and those which
+are rare in England and Ireland are common there.  About Biarritz,
+on the Spanish frontier, all the moors are covered with Cornish
+heath, and the bogs with Orange-bell, and lovely they are to see;
+and growing among them is a tall heath six feet high, which they
+call there bruyere, or Broomheath, because they make brooms of it:
+and out of its roots the "briar-root" pipes are made.  There are
+other heaths about that country, too, whose names I do not know;
+so that when you are there, you fancy yourself in the very home of
+the heaths:  but you are not.  They must have come from some land
+near where the Azores are now; or how could heaths have got past
+Africa, and the tropics, to the Cape of Good Hope?
+
+It seems very wonderful, to be able to find out that there was a
+great land once in the ocean all by a few little heaths.
+
+Not by them only, child.  There are many other plants, and animals
+too, which make one think that so it must have been.  And now I
+will tell you something stranger still.  There may have been a
+time--some people say that there must--when Africa and South
+America were joined by land.
+
+Africa and South America!  Was that before the heaths came here,
+or after?
+
+I cannot tell:  but I think, probably after.  But this is certain,
+that there must have been a time when figs, and bamboos, and
+palms, and sarsaparillas, and many other sorts of plants could get
+from Africa to America, or the other way, and indeed almost round
+the world.  About the south of France and Italy you will see one
+beautiful sarsaparilla, with hooked prickles, zigzagging and
+twining about over rocks and ruins, trunks and stems:  and when
+you do, if you have understanding, it will seem as strange to you
+as it did to me to remember that the home of the sarsaparillas is
+not in Europe, but in the forests of Brazil, and the River Plate.
+
+Oh, I have heard about their growing there, and staining the
+rivers brown, and making them good medicine to drink:  but I never
+thought there were any in Europe.
+
+There are only one or two, and how they got there is a marvel
+indeed.  But now-- If there was not dry land between Africa and
+South America, how did the cats get into America?  For they cannot
+swim.
+
+Cats?  People might have brought them over.
+
+Jaguars and Pumas, which you read of in Captain Mayne Reid's
+books, are cats, and so are the Ocelots or tiger cats.
+
+Oh, I saw them at the Zoological Gardens.
+
+But no one would bring them over, I should think, except to put
+them in the Zoo.
+
+Not unless they were very foolish.
+
+And much stronger and cleverer than the savages of South America.
+No, those jaguars and pumus have been in America for ages:  and
+there are those who will tell you--and I think they have some
+reason on their side--that the jaguar, with his round patches of
+spots, was once very much the same as the African and Indian
+leopard, who can climb trees well.  So when he got into the tropic
+forests of America, he took to the trees, and lived among the
+branches, feeding on sloths and monkeys, and never coming to the
+ground for weeks, till he grew fatter and stronger and far more
+terrible than his forefathers.  And they will tell you, too, that
+the puma was, perhaps--I only say perhaps--something like the
+lion, who (you know) has no spots.  But when he got into the
+forests, he found very little food under the trees, only a very
+few deer; and so he was starved, and dwindled down to the poor
+little sheep-stealing rogue he is now, of whom nobody is afraid.
+
+Oh, yes!  I remember now A. said he and his men killed six in one
+day.  But do you think it is all true about the pumas and jaguars?
+
+My child, I don't say that it is true:  but only that it is likely
+to be true.  In science we must be cautious and modest, and ready
+to alter our minds whenever we learn fresh facts; only keeping
+sure of one thing, that the truth, when we find it out, will be
+far more wonderful than any notions of ours.  See!  As we have
+been talking we have got nearly home:  and luncheon must be ready.
+
+* * *
+
+Why are you opening your eyes at me like the dog when he wants to
+go out walking?
+
+Because I want to go out.  But I don't want to go out walking.  I
+want to go in the yacht.
+
+In the yacht?  It does not belong to me.
+
+Oh, that is only fun.  I know everybody is going out in it to see
+such a beautiful island full of ferns, and have a picnic on the
+rocks; and I know you are going.
+
+Then you know more than I do myself.
+
+But I heard them say you were going.
+
+Then they know more than I do myself.
+
+But would you not like to go?
+
+I might like to go very much indeed; but as I have been knocked
+about at sea a good deal, and perhaps more than I intend to be
+again, it is no novelty to me, and there might be other things
+which I liked still better:  for instance, spending the afternoon
+with you.
+
+Then am I not to go?
+
+I think not.  Don't pull such a long face:  but be a man, and make
+up your mind to it, as the geese do to going barefoot.
+
+But why may I not go?
+
+Because I am not Madam How, but your Daddy.
+
+What can that have to do with it?
+
+If you asked Madam How, do you know what she would answer in a
+moment, as civilly and kindly as could be?  She would say--Oh yes,
+go by all means, and please yourself, my pretty little man.  My
+world is the Paradise which the Irishman talked of, in which "a
+man might do what was right in the sight of his own eyes, and what
+was wrong too, as he liked it."
+
+Then Madam How would let me go in the yacht?
+
+Of course she would, or jump overboard when you were in it; or put
+your finger in the fire, and your head afterwards; or eat Irish
+spurge, and die like the salmon; or anything else you liked.
+Nobody is so indulgent as Madam How:  and she would be the dearest
+old lady in the world, but for one ugly trick that she has.  She
+never tells any one what is coming, but leaves them to find it out
+for themselves.  She lets them put their fingers in the fire, and
+never tells them that they will get burnt.
+
+But that is very cruel and treacherous of her.
+
+My boy, our business is not to call hard names, but to take things
+as we find them, as the Highlandman said when he ate the braxy
+mutton.  Now shall I, because I am your Daddy, tell you what Madam
+How would not have told you?  When you get on board the yacht, you
+will think it all very pleasant for an hour, as long as you are in
+the bay.  But presently you will get a little bored, and run about
+the deck, and disturb people, and want to sit here, there, and
+everywhere, which I should not like.  And when you get beyond that
+headland, you will find the great rollers coming in from the
+Atlantic, and the cutter tossing and heaving as you never felt
+before, under a burning sun.  And then my merry little young
+gentleman will begin to feel a little sick; and then very sick,
+and more miserable than he ever felt in his life; and wish a
+thousand times over that he was safe at home, even doing sums in
+long division; and he will give a great deal of trouble to various
+kind ladies--which no one has a right to do, if he can help it.
+
+Of course I do not wish to be sick:  only it looks such beautiful
+weather.
+
+And so it is:  but don't fancy that last night's rain and wind can
+have passed without sending in such a swell as will frighten you,
+when you see the cutter climbing up one side of a wave, and
+running down the other; Madam How tells me that, though she will
+not tell you yet.
+
+Then why do they go out?
+
+Because they are accustomed to it.  They have come hither all
+round from Cowes, past the Land's End, and past Cape Clear, and
+they are not afraid or sick either.  But shall I tell you how you
+would end this evening?--at least so I suspect.  Lying miserable
+in a stuffy cabin, on a sofa, and not quite sure whether you were
+dead or alive, till you were bundled into a boat about twelve
+o'clock at night, when you ought to be safe asleep, and come home
+cold, and wet, and stupid, and ill, and lie in bed all to-morrow.
+
+But will they be wet and cold?
+
+I cannot be sure; but from the look of the sky there to westward,
+I think some of them will be.  So do you make up your mind to stay
+with me.  But if it is fine and smooth to-morrow, perhaps we may
+row down the bay, and see plenty of wonderful things.
+
+But why is it that Madam How will not tell people beforehand what
+will happen to them, as you have told me?
+
+Now I will tell you a great secret, which, alas! every one has not
+found out yet.  Madam How will teach you, but only by experience.
+Lady Why will teach you, but by something very different--by
+something which has been called--and I know no better names for
+it--grace and inspiration; by putting into your heart feelings
+which no man, not even your father and mother, can put there; by
+making you quick to love what is right, and hate what is wrong,
+simply because they are right and wrong, though you don't know why
+they are right and wrong; by making you teachable, modest,
+reverent, ready to believe those who are older and wiser than you
+when they tell you what you could never find out for yourself:
+and so you will be prudent, that is provident, foreseeing, and
+know what will happen if you do so-and-so; and therefore what is
+really best and wisest for you.
+
+But why will she be kind enough to do that for me?
+
+For the very same reason that I do it.  For God's sake.  Because
+God is your Father in heaven, as I am your father on earth, and He
+does not wish His little child to be left to the hard teaching of
+Nature and Law, but to be helped on by many, many unsought and
+undeserved favours, such as are rightly called "Means of Grace;"
+and above all by the Gospel and good news that you are God's
+child, and that God loves you, and has helped and taught you, and
+will help you and teach you, in a thousand ways of which you are
+not aware, if only you will be a wise child, and listen to Lady
+Why, when she cries from her Palace of Wisdom, and the feast which
+she has prepared, "Whoso is simple let him turn in hither;" and
+says to him who wants understanding--"Come, eat of my bread, and
+drink of the wine which I have mingled."
+
+"Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom:  I am understanding; I have
+strength.  By me kings reign, and princes decree justice.  By me
+princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth.  I
+love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find
+me.  Riches and honour are with me; yea, durable riches and
+righteousness."
+
+Yes, I will try and listen to Lady Why:  but what will happen if I
+do not?
+
+That will happen to you, my child--but God forbid it ever should
+happen--which happens to wicked kings and rulers, and all men,
+even the greatest and cleverest, if they do not choose to reign by
+Lady Why's laws, and decree justice according to her eternal ideas
+of what is just, but only do what seems pleasant and profitable to
+themselves.  On them Lady Why turns round, and says--for she, too,
+can be awful, ay dreadful, when she needs -
+
+"Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my
+hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my
+counsel, and would have none of my reproof--"  And then come words
+so terrible, that I will not speak them here in this happy place:
+but what they mean is this:-
+
+That these foolish people are handed over--as you and I shall be
+if we do wrong wilfully--to Madam How and her terrible school-
+house, which is called Nature and the Law, to be treated just as
+the plants and animals are treated, because they did not choose to
+behave like men and children of God.  And there they learn,
+whether they like or not, what they might have learnt from Lady
+Why all along.  They learn the great law, that as men sow so they
+will reap; as they make their bed so they will lie on it:  and
+Madam How can teach that as no one else can in earth or heaven:
+only, unfortunately for her scholars, she is apt to hit so hard
+with her rod, which is called Experience, that they never get over
+it; and therefore most of those who will only be taught by Nature
+and Law are killed, poor creatures, before they have learnt their
+lesson; as many a savage tribe is destroyed, ay and great and
+mighty nations too--the old Roman Empire among them.
+
+And the poor Jews, who were carried away captive to Babylon?
+
+Yes; they would not listen to Lady Why, and so they were taken in
+hand by Madam How, and were seventy years in her terrible school-
+house, learning a lesson which, to do them justice, they never
+forgot again.  But now we will talk of something pleasanter.  We
+will go back to Lady Why, and listen to her voice.  It sounds
+gentle and cheerful enough just now.  Listen.
+
+What? is she speaking to us now?
+
+Hush! open your eyes and ears once more, for you are growing
+sleepy with my long sermon.  Watch the sleepy shining water, and
+the sleepy green mountains.  Listen to the sleepy lapping of the
+ripple, and the sleepy sighing of the woods, and let Lady Why talk
+to you through them in "songs without words," because they are
+deeper than all words, till you, too, fall asleep with your head
+upon my knee.
+
+But what does she say?
+
+She says--"Be still.  The fulness of joy is peace."  There, you
+are fast asleep; and perhaps that is the best thing for you; for
+sleep will (so I am informed, though I never saw it happen, nor
+any one else) put fresh gray matter into your brain; or save the
+wear and tear of the old gray matter; or something else--when they
+have settled what it is to do:  and if so, you will wake up with a
+fresh fiddle-string to your little fiddle of a brain, on which you
+are playing new tunes all day long.  So much the better:  but when
+I believe that your brain is you, pretty boy, then I shall believe
+also that the fiddler is his fiddle.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII--HOMEWARD BOUND
+
+
+
+Come:  I suppose you consider yourself quite a good sailor by now?
+
+Oh, yes.  I have never been ill yet, though it has been quite
+rough again and again.
+
+What you call rough, little man.  But as you are grown such a very
+good sailor, and also as the sea is all but smooth, I think we
+will have a sail in the yacht to-day, and that a tolerably long
+one.
+
+Oh, how delightful! but I thought we were going home; and the
+things are all packed up.
+
+And why should we not go homewards in the yacht, things and all?
+
+What, all the way to England?
+
+No, not so far as that; but these kind people, when they came into
+the harbour last night, offered to take us up the coast to a town,
+where we will sleep, and start comfortably home to-morrow morning.
+So now you will have a chance of seeing something of the great sea
+outside, and of seeing, perhaps, the whale himself.
+
+I hope we shall see the whale.  The men say he has been outside
+the harbour every day this week after the fish.
+
+Very good.  Now do you keep quiet, and out of the way, while we
+are getting ready to go on board; and take a last look at this
+pretty place, and all its dear kind people.
+
+And the dear kind dogs too, and the cat and the kittens.
+
+* * *
+
+Now, come along, and bundle into the boat, if you have done
+bidding every one good-bye; and take care you don't slip down in
+the ice-groovings, as you did the other day.  There, we are off at
+last.
+
+Oh, look at them all on the rock watching us and waving their
+handkerchiefs; and Harper and Paddy too, and little Jimsy and Isy,
+with their fat bare feet, and their arms round the dogs' necks.  I
+am so sorry to leave them all.
+
+Not sorry to go home?
+
+No, but-- They have been so kind; and the dogs were so kind.  I am
+sure they knew we were going, and were sorry too.
+
+Perhaps they were.  They knew we were going away, at all events.
+They know what bringing out boxes and luggage means well enough.
+
+Sam knew, I am sure; but he did not care for us.  He was only
+uneasy because he thought Harper was going, and he should lose his
+shooting; and as soon as he saw Harper was not getting into the
+boat, he sat down and scratched himself, quite happy.  But do dogs
+think?
+
+Of course they do, only they do not think in words, as we do.
+
+But how can they think without words?
+
+That is very difficult for you and me to imagine, because we
+always think in words.  They must think in pictures, I suppose, by
+remembering things which have happened to them.  You and I do that
+in our dreams.  I suspect that savages, who have very few words to
+express their thoughts with, think in pictures, like their own
+dogs.  But that is a long story.  We must see about getting on
+board now, and under way.
+
+* * *
+
+Well, and what have you been doing?
+
+Oh, I looked all over the yacht, at the ropes and curious things;
+and then I looked at the mountains, till I was tired; and then I
+heard you and some gentleman talking about the land sinking, and I
+listened.  There was no harm in that?
+
+None at all.  But what did you hear him say?
+
+That the land must be sinking here, because there were peat-bogs
+everywhere below high-water mark.  Is that true?
+
+Quite true; and that peat would never have been formed where the
+salt water could get at it, as it does now every tide.
+
+But what was it he said about that cliff over there?
+
+He said that cliff on our right, a hundred feet high, was plainly
+once joined on to that low island on our left.
+
+What, that long bank of stones, with a house on it?
+
+That is no house.  That is a square lump of mud, the last
+remaining bit of earth which was once the moraine of a glacier.
+Every year it crumbles into the sea more and more; and in a few
+years it will be all gone, and nothing left but the great round
+boulder-stones which the ice brought down from the glaciers behind
+us.
+
+But how does he know that it was once joined to the cliff?
+
+Because that cliff, and the down behind it, where the cows are
+fed, is made up, like the island, of nothing but loose earth and
+stones; and that is why it is bright and green beside the gray
+rocks and brown heather of the moors at its foot.  He knows that
+it must be an old glacier moraine; and he has reason to think that
+moraine once stretched right across the bay to the low island, and
+perhaps on to the other shore, and was eaten out by the sea as the
+land sank down.
+
+But how does he know that the land sank?
+
+Of that, he says, he is quite certain; and this is what he says.--
+Suppose there was a glacier here, where we are sailing now:  it
+would end in an ice cliff, such as you have seen a picture of in
+Captain Cook's Voyages, of which you are so fond.  You recollect
+the pictures of Christmas Sound and Possession Bay?
+
+Oh yes, and pictures of Greenland and Spitzbergen too, with
+glaciers in the sea.
+
+Then icebergs would break off from that cliff, and carry all the
+dirt and stones out to sea, perhaps hundreds of miles away,
+instead of letting it drop here in a heap; and what did fall in a
+heap here the sea would wash down at once, and smooth it over the
+sea-bottom, and never let it pile up in a huge bank like that.  Do
+you understand?
+
+I think I do.
+
+Therefore, he says, that great moraine must have been built upon
+dry land, in the open air; and must have sunk since into the sea,
+which is gnawing at it day and night, and will some day eat it all
+up, as it would eat up all the dry land in the world, if Madam How
+was not continually lifting up fresh land, to make up for what the
+sea has carried off.
+
+Oh, look there! some one has caught a fish, and is hauling it up.
+What a strange creature!  It is not a mackerel, nor a gurnet, nor
+a pollock.
+
+How do you know that?
+
+Why, it is running along the top of the water like a snake; and
+they never do that.  Here it comes.  It has got a long beak, like
+a snipe.  Oh, let me see.
+
+See if you like:  but don't get in the way.  Remember you are but
+a little boy.
+
+What is it? a snake with a bird's head?
+
+No:  a snake has no fins; and look at its beak:  it is full of
+little teeth, which no bird has.  But a very curious fellow he is,
+nevertheless:  and his name is Gar-fish.  Some call him Green-
+bone, because his bones are green.
+
+But what kind of fish is he?  He is like nothing I ever saw.
+
+I believe he is nearest to a pike, though his backbone is
+different from a pike, and from all other known fishes.
+
+But is he not very rare?
+
+Oh no:  he comes to Devonshire and Cornwall with the mackerel, as
+he has come here; and in calm weather he will swim on the top of
+the water, and play about, and catch flies, and stand bolt upright
+with his long nose in the air; and when the fisher-boys throw him
+a stick, he will jump over it again and again, and play with it in
+the most ridiculous way.
+
+And what will they do with him?
+
+Cut him up for bait, I suppose, for he is not very good to eat.
+
+Certainly, he does smell very nasty.
+
+Have you only just found out that?  Sometimes when I have caught
+one, he has made the boat smell so that I was glad to throw him
+overboard, and so he saved his life by his nastiness.  But they
+will catch plenty of mackerel now; for where he is they are; and
+where they are, perhaps the whale will be; for we are now well
+outside the harbour, and running across the open bay; and lucky
+for you that there are no rollers coming in from the Atlantic, and
+spouting up those cliffs in columns of white foam.
+
+* * *
+
+"Hoch!"
+
+Ah!  Who was that coughed just behind the ship?
+
+Who, indeed? look round and see.
+
+There is nobody.  There could not be in the sea.
+
+Look--there, a quarter of a mile away.
+
+Oh!  What is that turning over in the water, like a great black
+wheel?  And a great tooth on it, and--oh! it is gone!
+
+Never mind.  It will soon show itself again.
+
+But what was it?
+
+The whale:  one of them, at least; for the men say there are two
+different ones about the bay.  That black wheel was part of his
+back, as he turned down; and the tooth on it was his back-fin.
+
+But the noise, like a giant's cough?
+
+Rather like the blast of a locomotive just starting.  That was his
+breath.
+
+What? as loud as that?
+
+Why not?  He is a very big fellow, and has big lungs.
+
+How big is he?
+
+I cannot say:  perhaps thirty or forty feet long.  We shall be
+able to see better soon.  He will come up again, and very likely
+nearer us, where those birds are.
+
+I don't want him to come any nearer.
+
+You really need not be afraid.  He is quite harmless.
+
+But he might run against the yacht.
+
+He might:  and so might a hundred things happen which never do.
+But I never heard of one of these whales running against a vessel;
+so I suppose he has sense enough to know that the yacht is no
+concern of his, and to keep out of its way.
+
+But why does he make that tremendous noise only once, and then go
+under water again?
+
+You must remember that he is not a fish.  A fish takes the water
+in through his mouth continually, and it runs over his gills, and
+out behind through his gill-covers.  So the gills suck-up the air
+out of the water, and send it into the fish's blood, just as they
+do in the newt-larva.
+
+Yes, I know.
+
+But the whale breathes with lungs like you and me; and when he
+goes under water he has to hold his breath, as you and I have.
+
+What a long time he can hold it.
+
+Yes.  He is a wonderful diver.  Some whales, they say, will keep
+under for an hour.  But while he is under, mind, the air in his
+lungs is getting foul, and full of carbonic acid, just as it would
+in your lungs, if you held your breath.  So he is forced to come
+up at last:  and then out of his blowers, which are on the top of
+his head, he blasts out all the foul breath, and with it the water
+which has got into his mouth, in a cloud of spray.  Then he sucks
+in fresh air, as much as he wants, and dives again, as you saw him
+do just now.
+
+And what does he do under water?
+
+Look--and you will see.  Look at those birds.  We will sail up to
+them; for Mr. Whale will probably rise among them soon.
+
+Oh, what a screaming and what a fighting!  How many sorts there
+are!  What are those beautiful little ones, like great white
+swallows, with crested heads and forked tails, who hover, and then
+dip down and pick up something?
+
+Terns--sea-swallows.  And there are gulls in hundreds, you see,
+large and small, gray-backed and black-backed; and over them all
+two or three great gannets swooping round and round.
+
+Oh! one has fallen into the sea!
+
+Yes, with a splash just like a cannon ball.  And here he comes up
+again, with a fish in his beak.  If he had fallen on your head,
+with that beak of his, he would have split it open.  I have heard
+of men catching gannets by tying a fish on a board, and letting it
+float; and when the gannet strikes at it he drives his bill into
+the board, and cannot get it out.
+
+But is not that cruel?
+
+I think so.  Gannets are of no use, for eating, or anything else.
+
+What a noise!  It is quite deafening.  And what are those black
+birds about, who croak like crows, or parrots?
+
+Look at them.  Some have broad bills, with a white stripe on it,
+and cry something like the moor-hens at home.  Those are razor-
+bills.
+
+And what are those who say "marrock," something like a parrot?
+
+The ones with thin bills? they are guillemots, "murres" as we call
+them in Devon:  but in some places they call them "marrocks," from
+what they say.
+
+And each has a little baby bird swimming behind it.  Oh! there:
+the mother has cocked up her tail and dived, and the little one is
+swimming about looking for her!  How it cries!  It is afraid of
+the yacht.
+
+And there she comes up again, and cries "marrock" to call it.
+
+Look at it swimming up to her, and cuddling to her, quite happy.
+
+Quite happy.  And do you not think that any one who took a gun and
+shot either that mother or that child would be both cowardly and
+cruel?
+
+But they might eat them.
+
+These sea-birds are not good to eat.  They taste too strong of
+fish-oil.  They are of no use at all, except that the gulls' and
+terns' feathers are put into girls' hats.
+
+Well they might find plenty of other things to put in their hats.
+
+So I think.  Yes:  it would be very cruel, very cruel indeed, to
+do what some do, shoot at these poor things, and leave them
+floating about wounded till they die.  But I suppose, if one gave
+them one's mind about such doings, and threatened to put the new
+Sea Fowl Act in force against them, and fine them, and show them
+up in the newspapers, they would say they meant no harm, and had
+never thought about its being cruel.
+
+Then they ought to think.
+
+They ought; and so ought you.  Half the cruelty in the world, like
+half the misery, comes simply from people's not thinking; and boys
+are often very cruel from mere thoughtlessness.  So when you are
+tempted to rob birds' nests, or to set the dogs on a moorhen, or
+pelt wrens in the hedge, think; and say--How should I like that to
+be done to me?
+
+I know:  but what are all the birds doing?
+
+Look at the water, how it sparkles.  It is alive with tiny fish,
+"fry," "brett" as we call them in the West, which the mackerel are
+driving up to the top.
+
+Poor little things!  How hard on them!  The big fish at them from
+below, and the birds at them from above.  And what is that?
+Thousands of fish leaping out of the water, scrambling over each
+other's backs.  What a curious soft rushing roaring noise they
+make!
+
+Aha!  The eaters are going to be eaten in turn.  Those are the
+mackerel themselves; and I suspect they see Mr. Whale, and are
+scrambling out of the way as fast as they can, lest he should
+swallow them down, a dozen at a time.  Look out sharp for him now.
+
+I hope he will not come very near.
+
+No.  The fish are going from us and past us.  If he comes up, he
+will come up astern of us, so look back.  There he is!
+
+That?  I thought it was a boat.
+
+Yes.  He does look very like a boat upside down.  But that is only
+his head and shoulders.  He will blow next.
+
+"Hoch!"
+
+Oh!  What a jet of spray, like the Geysers!  And the sun made a
+rainbow on the top of it.  He is quite still now.
+
+Yes; he is taking a long breath or two.  You need not hold my hand
+so tight.  His head is from us; and when he goes down he will go
+right away.
+
+Oh, he is turning head over heels!  There is his back fin again.
+And-- Ah! was that not a slap!  How the water boiled and foamed;
+and what a tail he had!  And how the mackerel flew out of the
+water!
+
+Yes.  You are a lucky boy to have seen that.  I have not seen one
+of those gentlemen show his "flukes," as they call them, since I
+was a boy on the Cornish coast.
+
+Where is he gone?
+
+Hunting mackerel, away out at sea.  But did you notice something
+odd about his tail, as you call it--though it is really none?
+
+It looked as if it was set on flat, and not upright, like a
+fish's.  But why is it not a tail?
+
+Just because it is set on flat, not upright:  and learned men will
+tell you that those two flukes are the "rudiments"--that is,
+either the beginning, or more likely the last remains--of two hind
+feet.  But that belongs to the second volume of Madam How's Book
+of Kind; and you have not yet learned any of the first volume, you
+know, except about a few butterflies.  Look here!  Here are more
+whales coming.  Don't be frightened.  They are only little ones,
+mackerel-hunting, like the big one.
+
+What pretty smooth things, turning head over heels, and saying,
+"Hush, Hush!"
+
+They don't really turn clean over; and that "Hush" is their way of
+breathing.
+
+Are they the young ones of that great monster?
+
+No; they are porpoises.  That big one is, I believe, a bottle-
+nose.  But if you want to know about the kinds of whales, you must
+ask Dr. Flower at the Royal College of Surgeons, and not me:  and
+he will tell you wonderful things about them.--How some of them
+have mouths full of strong teeth, like these porpoises; and
+others, like the great sperm whale in the South Sea, have huge
+teeth in their lower jaws, and in the upper only holes into which
+those teeth fit; others like the bottle-nose, only two teeth or so
+in the lower jaw; and others, like the narwhal, two straight tusks
+in the upper jaw, only one of which grows, and is what you call a
+narwhal's horn.
+
+Oh yes.  I know of a walking-stick made of one.
+
+And strangest of all, how the right-whales have a few little teeth
+when they are born, which never come through the gums; but,
+instead, they grow all along their gums, an enormous curtain of
+clotted hair, which serves as a net to keep in the tiny sea-
+animals on which they feed, and let the water strain out.
+
+You mean whalebone?  Is whalebone hair?
+
+So it seems.  And so is a rhinoceros's horn.  A rhinoceros used to
+be hairy all over in old times:  but now he carries all his hair
+on the end of his nose, except a few bristles on his tail.  And
+the right-whale, not to be done in oddity, carries all his on his
+gums.
+
+But have no whales any hair?
+
+No real whales:  but the Manati, which is very nearly a whale, has
+long bristly hair left.  Don't you remember M.'s letter about the
+one he saw at Rio Janeiro?
+
+This is all very funny:  but what is the use of knowing so much
+about things' teeth and hair?
+
+What is the use of learning Latin and Greek, and a dozen things
+more which you have to learn?  You don't know yet:  but wiser
+people than you tell you that they will be of use some day.  And I
+can tell you, that if you would only study that gar-fish long
+enough, and compare him with another fish something like him, who
+has a long beak to his lower jaw, and none to his upper--and how
+he eats I cannot guess,--and both of them again with certain
+fishes like them, which M. Agassiz has found lately, not in the
+sea, but in the river Amazon; and then think carefully enough over
+their bones and teeth, and their history from the time they are
+hatched--why, you would find out, I believe, a story about the
+river Amazon itself, more wonderful than all the fairy tales you
+ever read.
+
+Now there is luncheon ready.  Come down below, and don't tumble
+down the companion-stairs; and by the time you have eaten your
+dinner we shall be very near the shore.
+
+* * *
+
+So?  Here is my little man on deck, after a good night's rest.
+And he has not been the least sick, I hear.
+
+Not a bit:  but the cabin was so stuffy and hot, I asked leave to
+come on deck.  What a huge steamer!  But I do not like it as well
+as the yacht.  It smells of oil and steam, and -
+
+And pigs and bullocks too, I am sorry to say.  Don't go forward
+above them, but stay here with me, and look round.
+
+Where are we now?  What are those high hills, far away to the
+left, above the lowlands and woods?
+
+Those are the shore of the Old World--the Welsh mountains.
+
+And in front of us I can see nothing but flat land.  Where is
+that?
+
+That is the mouth of the Severn and Avon; where we shall be in
+half an hour more.
+
+And there, on the right, over the low hills, I can see higher
+ones, blue and hazy.
+
+Those are an island of the Old World, called now the Mendip Hills;
+and we are steaming along the great strait between the Mendips and
+the Welsh mountains, which once was coral reef, and is now the
+Severn sea; and by the time you have eaten your breakfast we shall
+steam in through a crack in that coral-reef; and you will see what
+you missed seeing when you went to Ireland, because you went on
+board at night.
+
+* * *
+
+Oh!  Where have we got to now?  Where is the wide Severn Sea?
+
+Two or three miles beyond us; and here we are in narrow little
+Avon.
+
+Narrow indeed.  I wonder that the steamer does not run against
+those rocks.  But how beautiful they are, and how the trees hang
+down over the water, and are all reflected in it!
+
+Yes.  The gorge of the Avon is always lovely.  I saw it first when
+I was a little boy like you; and I have seen it many a time since,
+in sunshine and in storm, and thought it more lovely every time.
+Look! there is something curious.
+
+What?  Those great rusty rings fixed into the rock?
+
+Yes.  Those may be as old, for aught I know, as Queen Elizabeth's
+or James's reign.
+
+But why were they put there?
+
+For ships to hold on by, if they lost the tide.
+
+What do you mean?
+
+It is high tide now.  That is why the water is almost up to the
+branches of the trees.  But when the tide turns, it will all rush
+out in a torrent which would sweep ships out to sea again, if they
+had not steam, as we have, to help them up against the stream.  So
+sailing ships, in old times, fastened themselves to those rings,
+and rode against the stream till the tide turned, and carried them
+up to Bristol.
+
+But what is the tide?  And why does it go up and down?  And why
+does it alter with the moon, as I heard you all saying so often in
+Ireland?
+
+That is a long story, which I must tell you something about some
+other time.  Now I want you to look at something else:  and that
+is, the rocks themselves, in which the rings are.  They are very
+curious in my eyes, and very valuable; for they taught me a lesson
+in geology when I was quite a boy:  and I want them to teach it to
+you now.
+
+What is there curious in them?
+
+This.  You will soon see for yourself, even from the steamer's
+deck, that they are not the same rock as the high limestone hills
+above.  They are made up of red sand and pebbles; and they are a
+whole world younger, indeed some say two worlds younger, than the
+limestone hills above, and lie upon the top of the limestone.  Now
+you may see what I meant when I said that the newer rocks, though
+they lie on the top of the older, were often lower down than they
+are.
+
+But how do you know that they lie on the limestone?
+
+Look into that corner of the river, as we turn round, and you will
+see with your own eyes.  There are the sandstones, lying flat on
+the turned-up edges of another rock.
+
+Yes; I see.  The layers of it are almost upright.
+
+Then that upright rock underneath is part of the great limestone
+hill above.  So the hill must have been raised out of the sea,
+ages ago, and eaten back by the waves; and then the sand and
+pebbles made a beach at its foot, and hardened into stone; and
+there it is.  And when you get through the limestone hills to
+Bristol, you will see more of these same red sandstone rocks,
+spread about at the foot of the limestone-hills, on the other
+side.
+
+But why is the sandstone two worlds newer than the limestone?
+
+Because between that sandstone and that limestone come hundreds of
+feet of rock, which carry in them all the coal in England.  Don't
+you remember that I told you that once before?
+
+Oh yes.  But I see no coal between them there.
+
+No.  But there is plenty of coal between them over in Wales; and
+plenty too between them on the other side of Bristol.  What you
+are looking at there is just the lip of a great coal-box, where
+the bottom and the lid join.  The bottom is the mountain
+limestone; and the lid is the new red sandstone, or Trias, as they
+call it now:  but the coal you cannot see.  It is stowed inside
+the box, miles away from here.  But now, look at the cliffs and
+the downs, which (they tell me) are just like the downs in the
+Holy Land; and the woods and villas, high over your head.
+
+And what is that in the air?  A bridge?
+
+Yes--that is the famous Suspension Bridge--and a beautiful work of
+art it is.  Ay, stare at it, and wonder at it, little man, of
+course.
+
+But is it not wonderful?
+
+Yes:  it was a clever trick to get those chains across the gulf,
+high up in the air:  but not so clever a trick as to make a single
+stone of which those piers are built, or a single flower or leaf
+in those woods.  The more you see of Madam How's masonry and
+carpentry, the clumsier man's work will look to you.  But now we
+must get ready to give up our tickets, and go ashore, and settle
+ourselves in the train; and then we shall have plenty to see as we
+run home; more curious, to my mind, than any suspension bridge.
+
+And you promised to show me all the different rocks and soils as
+we went home, because it was so dark when we came from Reading.
+
+Very good.
+
+* * *
+
+Now we are settled in the train.  And what do you want to know
+first?
+
+More about the new rocks being lower than the old ones, though
+they lie on the top of them.
+
+Well, look here, at this sketch.
+
+A boy piling up slates?  What has that to do with it?
+
+I saw you in Ireland piling slates against a rock just in this
+way.  And I thought to myself--"That is something like Madam How's
+work."
+
+How?
+
+Why, see.  The old rock stands for the mountains of the Old World,
+like the Welsh mountains, or the Mendip Hills.  The slates stand
+for the new rocks, which have been piled up against these, one
+over the other.  But, you see, each slate is lower than the one
+before it, and slopes more; till the last slate which you are
+putting on is the lowest of all, though it overlies all.
+
+I see now.  I see now.
+
+Then look at the sketch of the rocks between this and home.  It is
+only a rough sketch, of course:  but it will make you understand
+something more about the matter.  Now.  You see, the lump marked
+A.  With twisted lines in it.  That stands for the Mendip Hills to
+the west, which are made of old red sandstone, very much the same
+rock (to speak roughly) as the Kerry mountains.
+
+And why are the lines in it twisted?
+
+To show that the strata, the layers in it, are twisted, and set up
+at quite different angles from the limestone.
+
+But how was that done?
+
+By old earthquakes and changes which happened in old worlds, ages
+on ages since.  Then the edges of the old red sandstone were eaten
+away by the sea--and some think by ice too, in some earlier age of
+ice; and then the limestone coral reef was laid down on them,
+"unconformably," as geologists say--just as you saw the new red
+sandstone laid down on the edges of the limestone; and so one
+world is built up on the edge of another world, out of its scraps
+and ruins.
+
+Then do you see B.  With a notch in it?  That means these
+limestone hills on the shoulder of the Mendips; and that notch is
+the gorge of the Avon which we have steamed through.
+
+And what is that black above it?
+
+That is the coal, a few miles off, marked C.
+
+And what is this D, which comes next?
+
+That is what we are on now.  New red sandstone, lying
+unconformably on the coal.  I showed it you in the bed of the
+river, as we came along in the cab.  We are here in a sort of
+amphitheatre, or half a one, with the limestone hills around us,
+and the new red sandstone plastered on, as it were, round the
+bottom of it inside.
+
+But what is this high bit with E against it?
+
+Those are the high hills round Bath, which we shall run through
+soon.  They are newer than the soil here; and they are (for an
+exception) higher too; for they are so much harder than the soil
+here, that the sea has not eaten them away, as it has all the
+lowlands from Bristol right into the Somersetshire flats.
+
+* * *
+
+There.  We are off at last, and going to run home to Reading,
+through one of the loveliest lines (as I think) of old England.
+And between the intervals of eating fruit, we will geologize on
+the way home, with this little bit of paper to show us where we
+are.
+
+What pretty rocks!
+
+Yes.  They are a boss of the coal measures, I believe, shoved up
+with the lias, the lias lying round them.  But I warn you I may
+not be quite right:  because I never looked at a geological map of
+this part of the line, and have learnt what I know, just as I want
+you to learn simply by looking out of the carriage window.
+
+Look.  Here is lias rock in the side of the cutting; layers of
+hard blue limestone, and then layers of blue mud between them, in
+which, if you could stop to look, you would find fossils in
+plenty; and along that lias we shall run to Bath, and then all the
+rocks will change.
+
+* * *
+
+Now, here we are at Bath; and here are the handsome fruit-women,
+waiting for you to buy.
+
+And oh, what strawberries and cherries!
+
+Yes.  All this valley is very rich, and very sheltered too, and
+very warm; for the soft south-western air sweeps up it from the
+Bristol Channel; so the slopes are covered with fruit-orchards, as
+you will see as you get out of the station.
+
+Why, we are above the tops of the houses.
+
+Yes.  We have been rising ever since we left Bristol; and you will
+soon see why.  Now we have laid in as much fruit as is safe for
+you, and away we go.
+
+Oh, what high hills over the town!  And what beautiful stone
+houses!  Even the cottages are built of stone.
+
+All that stone comes out of those high hills, into which we are
+going now.  It is called Bath-stone freestone, or oolite; and it
+lies on the top of the lias, which we have just left.  Here it is
+marked F.
+
+What steep hills, and cliffs too, and with quarries in them!  What
+can have made them so steep?  And what can have made this little
+narrow valley?
+
+Madam How's rain-spade from above, I suppose, and perhaps the sea
+gnawing at their feet below.  Those freestone hills once stretched
+high over our heads, and far away, I suppose, to the westward.
+Now they are all gnawed out into cliffs,--indeed gnawed clean
+through in the bottom of the valley, where the famous hot springs
+break out in which people bathe.
+
+Is that why the place is called Bath?
+
+Of course.  But the Old Romans called the place Aquae Solis--the
+waters of the sun; and curious old Roman remains are found here,
+which we have not time to stop and see.
+
+Now look out at the pretty clear limestone stream running to meet
+us below, and the great limestone hills closing over us above.
+How do you think we shall get out from among them?
+
+Shall we go over their tops?
+
+No.  That would be too steep a climb, for even such a great engine
+as this.
+
+Then there is a crack which we can get through?
+
+Look and see.
+
+Why, we are coming to a regular wall of hill, and -
+
+And going right through it in the dark.  We are in the Box Tunnel.
+
+* * *
+
+There is the light again:  and now I suppose you will find your
+tongue.
+
+How long it seemed before we came out!
+
+Yes, because you were waiting and watching, with nothing to look
+at:  but the tunnel is only a mile and a quarter long after all, I
+believe.  If you had been looking at fields and hedgerows all the
+while, you would have thought no time at all had passed.
+
+What curious sandy rocks on each side of the cutting, in lines and
+layers.
+
+Those are the freestone still:  and full of fossils they are.  But
+do you see that they dip away from us?  Remember that.  All the
+rocks are sloping eastward, the way we are going; and each new
+rock or soil we come to lies on the top of the one before it.  Now
+we shall run down hill for many a mile, down the back of the
+oolites, past pretty Chippenham, and Wootton-Bassett, towards
+Swindon spire.  Look at the country, child; and thank God for this
+fair English land, in which your lot is cast.
+
+What beautiful green fields; and such huge elm trees; and
+orchards; and flowers in the cottage gardens!
+
+Ay, and what crops, too:  what wheat and beans, turnips and
+mangold.  All this land is very rich and easily worked; and
+hereabouts is some of the best farming in England.  The
+Agricultural College at Cirencester, of which you have so often
+heard, lies thereaway, a few miles to our left; and there lads go
+to learn to farm as no men in the world, save English and Scotch,
+know how to farm.
+
+But what rock are we on now?
+
+On rock that is much softer than that on the other side of the
+oolite hills:  much softer, because it is much newer.  We have got
+off the oolites on to what is called the Oxford clay; and then, I
+believe, on to the Coral rag, and on that again lies what we are
+coming to now.  Do you see the red sand in that field?
+
+Then that is the lowest layer of a fresh world, so to speak; a
+world still younger than the oolites--the chalk world.
+
+But that is not chalk, or anything like it.
+
+No, that is what is called Greensand.
+
+But it is not green, it is red.
+
+I know:  but years ago it got the name from one green vein in it,
+in which the "Coprolites," as you learnt to call them at
+Cambridge, are found; and that, and a little layer of blue clay,
+called gault, between the upper Greensand and lower Greensand,
+runs along everywhere at the foot of the chalk hills.
+
+I see the hills now.  Are they chalk?
+
+Yes, chalk they are:  so we may begin to feel near home now.  See
+how they range away to the south toward Devizes, and Westbury, and
+Warminster, a goodly land and large.  At their feet, everywhere,
+run the rich pastures on which the Wiltshire cheese is made; and
+here and there, as at Westbury, there is good iron-ore in the
+greensand, which is being smelted now, as it used to be in the
+Weald of Surrey and Kent ages since.  I must tell you about that
+some other time.
+
+But are there Coprolites here?
+
+I believe there are:  I know there are some at Swindon; and I do
+not see why they should not be found, here and there, all the way
+along the foot of the downs, from here to Cambridge.
+
+But do these downs go to Cambridge?
+
+Of course they do.  We are now in the great valley which runs
+right across England from south-west to north-east, from Axminster
+in Devonshire to Hunstanton in Norfolk, with the chalk always on
+your right hand, and the oolite hills on your left, till it ends
+by sinking into the sea, among the fens of Lincolnshire and
+Norfolk.
+
+But what made that great valley?
+
+I am not learned enough to tell.  Only this I think we can say--
+that once on a time these chalk downs on our right reached high
+over our heads here, and far to the north; and that Madam How
+pared them away, whether by icebergs, or by sea-waves, or merely
+by rain, I cannot tell.
+
+Well, those downs do look very like sea-cliffs.
+
+So they do, very like an old shore-line.  Be that as it may, after
+the chalk was eaten away, Madam How began digging into the soils
+below the chalk, on which we are now; and because they were mostly
+soft clays, she cut them out very easily, till she came down, or
+nearly down, to the harder freestone rocks which run along on our
+left hand, miles away; and so she scooped out this great vale,
+which we call here the Vale of White Horse; and further on, the
+Vale of Aylesbury; and then the Bedford Level; and then the dear
+ugly old Fens.
+
+Is this the Vale of White Horse?  Oh, I know about it; I have read
+The Scouring of the White Horse.
+
+Of course you have; and when you are older you will read a jollier
+book still,--Tom Brown's School Days--and when we have passed
+Swindon, we shall see some of the very places described in it,
+close on our right.
+
+* * *
+
+There is the White Horse Hill.
+
+The White Horse Hill?  But where is the horse?  I can see a bit of
+him:  but he does not look like a horse from here, or indeed from
+any other place; he is a very old horse indeed, and a thousand
+years of wind and rain have spoilt his anatomy a good deal on the
+top of that wild down.
+
+And is that really where Alfred fought the Danes?
+
+As certainly, boy, I believe, as that Waterloo is where the Duke
+fought Napoleon.  Yes:  you may well stare at it with all your
+eyes, the noble down.  It is one of the most sacred spots on
+English soil.
+
+Ah, it is gone now.  The train runs so fast.
+
+So it does; too fast to let you look long at one thing:  but in
+return, it lets you see so many more things in a given time than
+the slow old coaches and posters did.--Well? what is it?
+
+I wanted to ask you a question, but you won't listen to me.
+
+Won't I?  I suppose I was dreaming with my eyes open.  You see, I
+have been so often along this line--and through this country, too,
+long before the line was made--that I cannot pass it without its
+seeming full of memories--perhaps of ghosts.
+
+Of real ghosts?
+
+As real ghosts, I suspect, as any one on earth ever saw; faces and
+scenes which have printed themselves so deeply on one's brain,
+that when one passes the same place, long years after, they start
+up again, out of fields and roadsides, as if they were alive once
+more, and need sound sense to send them back again into their
+place as things which are past for ever, for good and ill.  But
+what did you want to know?
+
+Why, I am so tired of looking out of the window.  It is all the
+same:  fields and hedges, hedges and fields; and I want to talk.
+
+Fields and hedges, hedges and fields?  Peace and plenty, plenty
+and peace.  However, it may seem dull, now that the grass is cut;
+but you would not have said so two months ago, when the fields
+were all golden-green with buttercups, and the whitethorn hedges
+like crested waves of snow.  I should like to take a foreigner
+down the Vale of Berkshire in the end of May, and ask him what he
+thought of old England.  But what shall we talk about?
+
+I want to know about Coprolites, if they dig them here, as they do
+at Cambridge.
+
+I don't think they do.  But I suspect they will some day.
+
+But why do people dig them?
+
+Because they are rational men, and want manure for their fields.
+
+But what are Coprolites?
+
+Well, they were called Coprolites at first because some folk
+fancied they were the leavings of fossil animals, such as you may
+really find in the lias at Lynn in Dorsetshire.  But they are not
+that; and all we can say is, that a long time ago, before the
+chalk began to be made, there was a shallow sea in England, the
+shore of which was so covered with dead animals, that the bone-
+earth (the phosphate of lime) out of them crusted itself round
+every bone, and shell, and dead sea-beast on the shore, and got
+covered up with fresh sand, and buried for ages as a mine of
+wealth.
+
+But how many millions of dead creatures, there must have been!
+What killed them?
+
+We do not know.  No more do we know how it comes to pass that this
+thin band (often only a few inches thick) of dead creatures should
+stretch all the way from Dorsetshire to Norfolk, and, I believe,
+up through Lincolnshire.  And what is stranger still, this same
+bone-earth bed crops out on the south side of the chalk at
+Farnham, and stretches along the foot of those downs, right into
+Kent, making the richest hop lands in England, through Surrey, and
+away to Tunbridge.  So that it seems as if the bed lay under the
+chalk everywhere, if once we could get down to it.
+
+But how does it make the hop lands so rich?
+
+Because hops, like tobacco and vines, take more phosphorus out of
+the soil than any other plants which we grow in England; and it is
+the washings of this bone-earth bed which make the lower lands in
+Farnham so unusually rich, that in some of them--the garden, for
+instance, under the Bishop's castle--have grown hops without
+resting, I believe, for three hundred years.
+
+But who found out all this about the Coprolites?
+
+Ah--I will tell you; and show you how scientific men, whom
+ignorant people sometimes laugh at as dreamers, and mere pickers
+up of useless weeds and old stones, may do real service to their
+country and their countrymen, as I hope you will some day.
+
+There was a clergyman named Henslow, now with God, honoured by all
+scientific men, a kind friend and teacher of mine, loved by every
+little child in his parish.  His calling was botany:  but he knew
+something of geology.  And some of these Coprolites were brought
+him as curiosities, because they had fossils in them.  But he (so
+the tale goes) had the wit to see that they were not, like other
+fossils, carbonate of lime, but phosphate of lime--bone earth.
+Whereon he told the neighbouring farmers that they had a mine of
+wealth opened to them, if they would but use them for manure.  And
+after a while he was listened to.  Then others began to find them
+in the Eastern counties; and then another man, as learned and wise
+as he was good and noble--John Paine of Farnham, also now with
+God--found them on his own estate, and made much use and much
+money of them:  and now tens of thousands of pounds' worth of
+valuable manure are made out of them every year, in Cambridgeshire
+and Bedfordshire, by digging them out of land which was till
+lately only used for common farmers' crops.
+
+But how do they turn Coprolites into manure?  I used to see them
+in the railway trucks at Cambridge, and they were all like what I
+have at home--hard pebbles.
+
+They grind them first in a mill.  Then they mix them with
+sulphuric acid and water, and that melts them down, and parts them
+into two things.  One is sulphate of lime (gypsum, as it is
+commonly called), and which will not dissolve in water, and is of
+little use.  But the other is what is called superphosphate of
+lime, which will dissolve in water; so that the roots of the
+plants can suck it up:  and that is one of the richest of manures.
+
+Oh, I know:  you put superphosphate on the grass last year.
+
+Yes.  But not that kind; a better one still.  The superphosphate
+from the Copiolites is good; but the superphosphate from fresh
+bones is better still, and therefore dearer, because it has in it
+the fibrine of the bones, which is full of nitrogen, like gristle
+or meat; and all that has been washed out of the bone-earth bed
+ages and ages ago.  But you must learn some chemistry to
+understand that.
+
+I should like to be a scientific man, if one can find out such
+really useful things by science.
+
+Child, there is no saying what you might find out, or of what use
+you may be to your fellow-men.  A man working at science, however
+dull and dirty his work may seem at times, is like one of those
+"chiffoniers," as they call them in Paris--people who spend their
+lives in gathering rags and sifting refuse, but who may put their
+hands at any moment upon some precious jewel.  And not only may
+you be able to help your neighbours to find out what will give
+them health and wealth:  but you may, if you can only get them to
+listen to you, save them from many a foolish experiment, which
+ends in losing money just for want of science.  I have heard of a
+man who, for want of science, was going to throw away great sums
+(I believe he, luckily for him, never could raise the money) in
+boring for coal in our Bagshot sands at home.  The man thought
+that because there was coal under the heather moors in the North,
+there must needs be coal here likewise, when a geologist could
+have told him the contrary.  There was another man at Hennequin's
+Lodge, near the Wellington College, who thought he would make the
+poor sands fertile by manuring them with whale oil, of all things
+in the world.  So he not only lost all the cost of his whale oil,
+but made the land utterly barren, as it is unto this day; and all
+for want of science.
+
+And I knew a manufacturer, too, who went to bore an Artesian well
+for water, and hired a regular well-borer to do it.  But,
+meanwhile he was wise enough to ask a geologist of those parts how
+far he thought it was down to the water.  The geologist made his
+calculations, and said:
+
+"You will go through so many feet of Bagshot sand; and so many
+feet of London clay; and so many feet of the Thanet beds between
+them and the chalk:  and then you will win water, at about 412
+feet; but not, I think, till then."
+
+The well-sinker laughed at that, and said, "He had no opinion of
+geologists, and such-like.  He never found any clay in England but
+what he could get through in 150 feet."
+
+So he began to bore--150 feet, 200, 300:  and then he began to
+look rather silly; at last, at 405--only seven feet short of what
+the geologist had foretold--up came the water in a regular spout.
+But, lo and behold, not expecting to have to bore so deep, he had
+made his bore much too small; and the sand out of the Thanet beds
+"blew up" into the bore, and closed it.  The poor manufacturer
+spent hundreds of pounds more in trying to get the sand out, but
+in vain; and he had at last to make a fresh and much larger well
+by the side of the old one, bewailing the day when he listened to
+the well-sinker and not to the geologist, and so threw away more
+than a thousand pounds.  And there is an answer to what you asked
+on board the yacht--What use was there in learning little matters
+of natural history and science, which seemed of no use at all?
+And now, look out again.  Do you see any change in the country?
+
+What?
+
+Why, there to the left.
+
+There are high hills there now, as well as to the right.  What are
+they?
+
+Chalk hills too.  The chalk is on both sides of us now.  These are
+the Chilterns, all away to Ipsden and Nettlebed, and so on across
+Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, and into Hertfordshire; and on
+again to Royston and Cambridge, while below them lies the Vale of
+Aylesbury; you can just see the beginning of it on their left.  A
+pleasant land are those hills, and wealthy; full of noble houses
+buried in the deep beech-woods, which once were a great forest,
+stretching in a ring round the north of London, full of deer and
+boar, and of wild bulls too, even as late as the twelfth century,
+according to the old legend of Thomas e Becket's father and the
+fair Saracen, which you have often heard.
+
+I know.  But how are you going to get through the chalk hills?  Is
+there a tunnel as there is at Box and at Micheldever?
+
+No.  Something much prettier than a tunnel and something which
+took a great many years longer in making.  We shall soon meet with
+a very remarkable and famous old gentleman, who is a great adept
+at digging, and at landscape gardening likewise; and he has dug
+out a path for himself through the chalk, which we shall take the
+liberty of using also.  And his name, if you wish to know it, is
+Father Thames.
+
+I see him.  What a great river!
+
+Yes.  Here he comes, gleaming and winding down from Oxford, over
+the lowlands, past Wallingford; but where he is going to it is not
+so easy to see.
+
+Ah, here is chalk in the cutting at last.  And what a high bridge.
+And the river far under our feet.  Why we are crossing him again!
+
+Yes; he winds more sharply than a railroad can.  But is not this
+prettier than a tunnel?
+
+Oh, what hanging-woods, and churches; and such great houses, and
+pretty cottages and gardens--all in this narrow crack of a valley!
+
+Ay.  Old Father Thames is a good landscape gardener, as I said.
+There is Basildon--and Hurley--and Pangbourne, with its roaring
+lasher.  Father Thames has had to work hard for many an age before
+he could cut this trench right through the chalk, and drain the
+water out of the flat vale behind us.  But I suspect the sea
+helped him somewhat, or perhaps a great deal, just where we are
+now.
+
+The sea?
+
+Yes.  The sea was once--and that not so very long ago--right up
+here, beyond Reading.  This is the uppermost end of the great
+Thames valley, which must have been an estuary--a tide flat, like
+the mouth of the Severn, with the sea eating along at the foot of
+all the hills.  And if the land sunk only some fifty feet,--which
+is a very little indeed, child, in this huge, ever-changing
+world,--then the tide would come up to Reading again, and the
+greater part of London and the county of Middlesex be drowned in
+salt water.
+
+How dreadful that would be!
+
+Dreadful indeed.  God grant that it may never happen.  More
+terrible changes of land and water have happened, and are
+happening still in the world:  but none, I think, could happen
+which would destroy so much civilisation and be such a loss to
+mankind, as that the Thames valley should become again what it
+was, geologically speaking, only the other day, when these gravel
+banks, over which we are running to Reading, were being washed out
+of the chalk cliffs up above at every tide, and rolled on a beach,
+as you have seen them rolling still at Ramsgate.
+
+Now here we are at Reading.  There is the carriage waiting, and
+away we are off home; and when we get home, and have seen
+everybody and everything, we will look over our section once more.
+
+But remember, that when you ran through the chalk hills to
+Reading, you passed from the bottom of the chalk to the top of it,
+on to the Thames gravels, which lie there on the chalk, and on to
+the London clay, which lies on the chalk also, with the Thames
+gravels always over it.  So that, you see, the newest layers, the
+London clay and the gravels, are lower in height than the
+limestone cliffs at Bristol, and much lower than the old mountain
+ranges of Devonshire and Wales, though in geological order they
+are far higher; and there are whole worlds of strata, rocks and
+clays, one on the other, between the Thames gravels and the
+Devonshire hills.
+
+But how about our moors?  They are newer still, you said, than the
+London clay, because they lie upon it:  and yet they are much
+higher than we are here at Reading.
+
+Very well said:  so they are, two or three hundred feet higher.
+But our part of them was left behind, standing up in banks, while
+the valley of the Thames was being cut out by the sea.  Once they
+spread all over where we stand now, and away behind us beyond
+Newbury in Berkshire, and away in front of us, all over where
+London now stands.
+
+How can you tell that?
+
+Because there are little caps--little patches--of them left on the
+tops of many hills to the north of London; just remnants which the
+sea, and the Thames, and the rain have not eaten down.  Probably
+they once stretched right out to sea, sloping slowly under the
+waves, where the mouth of the Thames is now.  You know the sand-
+cliffs at Bournemouth?
+
+Of course.
+
+Then those are of the same age as the Bagshot sands, and lie on
+the London clay, and slope down off the New Forest into the sea,
+which eats them up, as you know, year by year and day by day.  And
+here were once perhaps cliffs just like them, where London Bridge
+now stands.
+
+* * *
+
+There, we are rumbling away home at last, over the dear old
+heather-moors.  How far we have travelled--in our fancy at least--
+since we began to talk about all these things, upon the foggy
+November day, and first saw Madam How digging at the sand-banks
+with her water-spade.  How many countries we have talked of; and
+what wonderful questions we have got answered, which all grew out
+of the first question, How were the heather-moors made?  And yet
+we have not talked about a hundredth part of the things about
+which these very heather-moors ought to set us thinking.  But so
+it is, child.  Those who wish honestly to learn the laws of Madam
+How, which we call Nature, by looking honestly at what she does,
+which we call Fact, have only to begin by looking at the very
+smallest thing, pin's head or pebble, at their feet, and it may
+lead them--whither, they cannot tell.  To answer any one question,
+you find you must answer another; and to answer that you must
+answer a third, and then a fourth; and so on for ever and ever.
+
+For ever and ever?
+
+Of course.  If we thought and searched over the Universe--ay, I
+believe, only over this one little planet called earth--for
+millions on millions of years, we should not get to the end of our
+searching.  The more we learnt, the more we should find there was
+left to learn.  All things, we should find, are constituted
+according to a Divine and Wonderful Order, which links each thing
+to every other thing; so that we cannot fully comprehend any one
+thing without comprehending all things:  and who can do that, save
+He who made all things?  Therefore our true wisdom is never to
+fancy that we do comprehend:  never to make systems and theories
+of the Universe (as they are called) as if we had stood by and
+looked on when time and space began to be; but to remember that
+those who say they understand, show, simply by so saying, that
+they understand nothing at all; that those who say they see, are
+sure to be blind; while those who confess that they are blind, are
+sure some day to see.  All we can do is, to keep up the childlike
+heart, humble and teachable, though we grew as wise as Newton or
+as Humboldt; and to follow, as good Socrates bids us, Reason
+whithersoever it leads us, sure that it will never lead us wrong,
+unless we have darkened it by hasty and conceited fancies of our
+own, and so have become like those foolish men of old, of whom it
+was said that the very light within them was darkness.  But if we
+love and reverence and trust Fact and Nature, which are the will,
+not merely of Madam How, or even of Lady Why, but of Almighty God
+Himself, then we shall be really loving, and reverencing, and
+trusting God; and we shall have our reward by discovering
+continually fresh wonders and fresh benefits to man; and find it
+as true of science, as it is of this life and of the life to come-
+-that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into
+the heart of man to conceive, what God has prepared for those who
+love Him.
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{1}  I could not resist the temptation of quoting this splendid
+generalisation from Dr. Carpenter's Preliminary Report of the
+Dredging Operations of H.M.S. "Lightening," 1868.  He attributes
+it, generously, to his colleague, Dr. Wyville Thomson.  Be it
+whose it may, it will mark (as will probably the whole Report when
+completed) a new era in Bio-Geology.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley
+
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