Chapter XII: (december) (1)

"A fire-mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jelly fish and a saurian
And caves where the cavemen dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty
And a face turned from the clod--
Some call it Evolution,
And others call it God."

--_William Herbert Carruth._

THE END OF THE WORLD

So the Ice Ages and their glaciers and the Romans and their Cæsars melted away. We know them only by the marks they left on the walls of time. But why this constant doing and undoing of things? We have seen it going on from the very beginning; rock crumbling to dust, dust changing back to rock; rocks raised up into mountains, mountains worn down to plains; then more mountains, and on through the same cycle of endless change; as if always starting the whole thing over again.

What is it all about? Are we getting anywhere? If so, where?

Ever since men looked out upon the world around them and began to think, they have puzzled not only about the causes but the purpose of this endless drama of creation and decay. Some said one thing; some said another. The Persian poet who wrote those fine lines about the lion and the lizard in the ruins of the palaces meant to say that's all that everything comes to; all things, men included, return to the elements of which they were made and that's the end of them. So, said he, what's the use of bothering one's head about it? There's nothing to be learned. One verse of his famous song reads like this:

"Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and saint, and heard great argument
About it and about; but evermore
Came out by the same door wherein I went."

But Science, as we shall now see, has a better answer.

I. Nothing Happens

In the first place you must have noticed as we came along through this little book that nothing happens in this world of ours; everything is under a government of laws. Not only did it turn out that there was method in the apparent madness of the sea but we found method everywhere. It was not chance that made our worlds, whether they were born full-grown or grew up piece by piece. And we see the same forces at work in small things as in the great. The force that keeps the earth in its orbit is just as careful to catch and plant the tiny seeds of the grasses and the pine-trees drifting forward in the wind, so keeping the world clothed with life and verdure.

ALL NATURE UNDER A GOVERNMENT OF LAW

So with the seasons with all that they mean in the life of the world; spring never fails to follow winter. Little things happen that make spring "late," as we say; but spring itself never fails to come and always in its right place in the procession of the year. All this because the earth stays in its orbit and spins on its axis. Watches break their mainsprings, clocks run down. These things "happen"; but we never think of saying that the mainspring or the wheels "happened," or that they "happened" into their places in the watch. The worlds not only make their appointed round as regularly as the wheels of a watch but they never run down, and the power that keeps them going and in their places never breaks. If it ever occurred in any other way--if we should hear of a world flying out of its orbit and going banging around among the other worlds, we could talk of "happening."

NATURE'S ACCIDENT INSURANCE SYSTEM

We might call these laws that make it so certain that nature's business will go on as usual, rain or shine, the Accident Insurance of the Universe. We have nothing quite like it in human insurance systems; for these only make it up to you--the best they can--after some accident has happened. Nature's insurance system, on the other hand, makes it certain that nothing _will_ happen to change the main course of things. The protective insurance of the universe is woven right through Nature itself. The continents, for example, were bound, in due course, to rise in their places, because it is the nature of cooling masses to shrink and for the outside to cool the faster and to harden and to wrinkle up. It doesn't matter whether the cooling mass is a little baked apple or a big hot earth.

By representing the great geologic periods of time in the form of
a clock-face a writer in the _Scientific American_ enables us to
form a rough conception of their duration, their distinguishing
features, and their relations to one another, according to
ideas associated with the theory of La Place, but which have
been considerably modified in the light of later reasoning and
investigation. The view now generally accepted, for example, is
that the Azoic era was longer than all subsequent time. But, taking
the picture as it stands, each "hour" represents 3,000,000 years.
For a quarter of the total period up to the very recent appearance
of man "there was darkness upon the face of the deep." Next after
the Azoic was the Laurentian Period, when "the dry land appeared."
Later came the dawn of life, and this life, like the inanimate
matter which preceded it, kept rising and continues to rise, as the
ages pass, to higher, more beautiful, and nobler forms.
]

Nor was it an accident that the continents in their original form grew larger with the fat of the land that was added to them under the action of the chemistry of the air. You see Nature must understand chemistry or things wouldn't come out right in the laboratory, as they always do if you have made no mistakes. Ever think of that, Mr. High School Boy?

II. The Strangest Thing of All That Didn't Happen

But the strangest thing of all that didn't happen in this history of the world and its making I'm going to tell you about now.

KINSHIP OF KITTENS AND APPLE-TREES

You remember what I said of the apple-tree in Chapter V (page 93), how nobody who didn't know it to be true would believe that little Miss Greenleaf and old Mr. Root and rough Mr. Bark and lovely Miss Blossom were not only born under the same roof but were as closely related as a pussy-cat and her nest full of kittens. I didn't mention the kittens then, but just suppose I had done so; and then had gone on to say that kittens are relations of the apple family and that all birds are related to all kittens, and that both are kindred of that terrible Mr. Cetiosaurus that we met in the Bad Lands of Dakota.

Would you have believed it?

No? Well, I don't wonder. It was quite a while before the wise men of science believed it. Now not only is this idea of the origin of all living things--animal and vegetable--universally accepted by men of science, but every educated person is supposed to know about it. It is always, and as a matter of course, put into the school-books dealing with the history of nature; just as in all histories we are sure to see Columbus landing in 1492 and George Washington being inaugurated April 30, 1789.

Most people, including the scientists, used to think that each kind of plant and animal was given its present form in the first place and that this form had never changed. This was known as the "special creation" theory; while the idea that the various kinds of plants and animals we now know gradually developed from quite different forms is called the theory of "evolution." Among the curious facts that finally led educated people everywhere to believe this strangest of all the strange fairy tales of the land of science were these:

AS WE READ THE ROCKS FROM THE BOTTOM UP

The remains and imprints of plant and animal life of long ago which we find in the rocks show successions of related but different forms in the rocks of different ages. At the beginning in the lowest rocks the forms are much alike, but grow more and more unlike as we climb these stairs of time. At first there are no animals with backbones; then there come animals with backbones that resemble each other in general build; and finally such wide varieties of backboned creatures as fish, birds, horses, and men. And so with endless varieties of birds and beasts and creeping things and the trees and the grasses of the field.

Sometimes the differences between these apparently related forms, as we find them in the rocks, are very great; but everything goes to show that this is because there are missing pages, so to speak, in the great stone book. When you remember how long it takes to make one of these layers of stone, and what they go through in cracking and twisting and wearing down on their way back to dust and the sea, and how quickly the remains of big animals--to say nothing of plants and insects--are destroyed, you must agree that the wonder is that we have any records at all. Yet so enormous has been the number of plants and animals that have died in the course of the world's history that there have been found hundreds and thousands of these remains and imprints between the layers of stone. In all cases the fashions in form change from age to age; and the longer the time, as shown by the thickness of the rock, the greater the change.

THE RABBIT THAT TURNED INTO A HORSE

The horse, which has been such a faithful carrier for man since man and horse arrived from the lower ranges of life, also brought with him on the way up one of the most complete of these strange autobiographies that our brother animals have recorded with their bones. The most of this story of the horse was found in the rocks of our Western States, but the first chapter of it saw the light about forty years ago in England. When the bones were found in the rock deposits of that country known as London Clay they looked so unhorselike that a famous paleontologist (as the students of these ancient anatomies are called) gave it a name which means "rabbit-like beast." But in rock of the same age in Wyoming they afterward found the bones of an animal that looked a little more like a horse, but plainly a close relation of the rabbit-like beast. They went on finding different forms, through thirteen successive stages of rock history, and with each new period the form kept getting larger and more horselike until they came to a horse with three toes; and finally to one with the single big toe which we call a hoof. Instead of the other two toes there were those two little lumps that you can feel in any horse's foot just above the hoof. These are the ends of two small splintlike bones that are all there is left of the other two toes.

So there have been found in the rock records more or less complete serial stories of thousands of plants and animals. In the case of man, not only do we find that there were once human beings on earth like the caveman with low forehead and huge jaw, but nothing has ever been found to indicate that there were any higher types of human beings in existence in his day. And both the caveman and the handsomest human beings of to-day--the captain of our football team, for example--have essentially the same bodily framework as the monkey tribe. This does not mean that man--even so low a creature as the caveman--descended from monkeys, any more than the fact that he has a backbone means he descended from humming-birds. But the backbones in humming-birds, monkeys, and men show that all are descended from older types of backboned creatures. As monkeys and men are much more alike than men and birds they are evidently more closely related.

We might suppose, to be sure, that men and all other forms of life which they resemble in any way were so made from the beginning; that is, if we hadn't learned from the records of the rocks that they _weren't_ so made from the beginning. Yet, even after that, we might go on supposing that each species was created separately, but that the form was changed from age to age. But in that case what are you going to say to this:

In man's body are several organs that are useless and often harmful. Other animals, also, contain among useful organs some that are "out-of-date," as we would say if we were speaking of some old machines in a machine-shop. Why, in making a brand-new species, shouldn't Nature have all the latest improvements from the start, just as man does in building a brand-new home? If each species was separately created it is hard to understand why these useless or harmful organs should be kept; but if one species grew out of another, by gradual improvement, just as cities grow out of villages, this is exactly what we might expect.

One of these useless organs in man is called the "vermiform appendix." It is always getting its name in the papers by giving trouble to some prominent man. Now this appendix, while a perfect nuisance to human beings, is just the thing for cows and other grass-eating animals. In them it is very large and of great use in digestion, while in the case of man and the monkey family it has shrunk into a little affair that puts in all its time either doing nothing or getting out of fix.

III. Upward; Always Upward

These are some of the reasons why the various varieties of animals are supposed to have descended from common ancestors and to have undergone endless changes of form; changes as strange as anything that was ever written into a fairy story or acted out in a Christmas pantomime. There are other things quite as convincing and even more thrilling to read about, such as the little theatre in the chicken's egg where strange, changing shadows re-enact the drama of ancient life; but these I am here passing by because my pages are running out and I want the rest of them to speak of what seems to me to be the greatest lesson of this whole book; the greatest and most useful and happiest lesson Science or any kind of book can teach; namely, that not only is the universe governed by Laws and Mind, but that all these laws act together as one Great Law and are working out one general result, the constant advance of all things toward a higher life.

HOW MAN HAS RISEN AS HE DESCENDED

As there was a period in human history when there were no human beings on earth higher than the cave-dweller, so there was a time when the highest forms of animal and vegetable life were minute creatures and plants consisting only of a single cell. It is such low forms of vegetable life that make the scum on the still waters of a pond. Step by step, in both the animal and vegetable world, rose the higher forms. The descent of man from lower forms of life used to be considered by many people as a thought that degraded humanity, but it is the most promising fact in all nature. The striking thing is, not that we are related in some way to the apes and the cavemen but that such a creature as an ape or a caveman should have helped develop such a beautiful thing as a little child.

This progress has not been steadily upward. The world of life, like the surface of the globe itself, has had its ups and downs. Wonderful nations like Greece and Rome have risen and flourished and passed away, but they left the best of themselves, the part that time cannot destroy. The Greeks taught us literature and art and the grace of life. The Romans gave us a science of government and a solid way of doing practical things, such as the building of good roads and bridges. The great lesson of history is that civilization and human liberty and all the things that make life worth living have not only survived the fall of empires but stand to-day on higher and firmer ground than they ever did before.

THE WORLD THAT MOTHER MADE

But do you know who was at the bottom of it all? Mother! All the things that men have done in the development of national life, with its arts and industries, everything we call civilization, grew out of the life and industry of the home, and it was mother who finally made the home. The mother idea came into the world with the first seed that ever started out to make its own way; for the mother plant had provided it with food enough to keep it going until it could get well-established in business. But the kind of mothers we know, mothers who stay with their babies and feed them, came very late in the long story of life. In the early days the world was not only without flowers and birds and the beautiful trees and varied landscapes we know, but it was motherless, in the sense that we understand mothers. In the lowest forms of life, such as the insects, the mothers and children never saw each other at all; for among the insects just as it is to-day the mother simply laid the eggs and then, before the little insects were born, passed away. Even among the fish, who are much closer relations of ours than the insects--since fish belong to the great brotherhood of the backbone--the sense of motherhood doesn't get beyond looking after the eggs. So with the next higher group to which the frogs belong; and the next, the reptiles. Only with the birds, the next group above the reptiles, do we begin to see what motherhood means. Then at the very top of the list come the class of animals whose very name has "mamma" in it; the "mammalia." Among these, even outside the human race, we find very striking examples of family love and devotion. The gorillas, for instance, although they haven't what one would call an attractive face, are good to their folks. Not only does Mamma Gorilla nurse her babies and carry them in her arms much as a human mother does, and fight and die for them, but a famous African traveller tells of a Mamma Gorilla who stayed safe with the babies in their humble home of sticks in the fork of a tree while Papa Gorilla sat all night at the foot of it, with his back against the trunk, to protect them from a leopard that had been seen prowling around.

Among most animals below man the babies are soon able to leave mother and shift for themselves, but in the case of human beings the baby is helpless for a much longer time. So, even among the lowest savages, it was necessary for father and mother to keep together and look after their children. Thus grew up family life; and out of the family the tribe; and out of many tribes living together and closely related, grew first small and then larger nations. Yet, always at the beginning, it was the mother, more than the father, who looked after the children and taught them, so bringing before the world the idea of doing things, not for one's self alone but for others. From this came the mutual giving and helping which made national life possible, and that is making this a better and better world to live in.

IV. The Great Unseen

So it is very plain not only that the end, the purpose of all this machinery and march of things that we have been going through since the beginning of Chapter I, is to make life better, more beautiful both in form and character, but to show that "all nature is on the side of those who try to rise."[59] It is plain also that this end must have been foreseen and intended from the beginning; for, from the very start each change in the world and in life was a preparation for another and a greater change. The change from rock to soil made plant life possible; the growth of plants made animal life possible, and so on up through the long succession of changes in this tree of life by which all things are related and which gave us the infinite variety of good things we already have--fruit, homes, churches, schools, art galleries, books, railroads and steamships that make the whole world neighbors; the telegraph, the newspapers, and the magazines that carry thought and knowledge and plans for the common good so fast and far that already it is as if a whole nation with its millions had a heart and brain in common.

[Footnote 59: Drummond: "The Ascent of Man."]

Man himself, you see, has become one of the great forces of nature in the evolution of nature, in the blossoming out and fruit-bearing of things. But now notice this: Back of all that man does and all that the rest of nature does is the great controlling force called Mind; and this Mind is invisible. If I should say of some great man that he had a powerful mind you would know just what I meant; but if anybody should ask "What did his mind _look_ like?" you would think that was an odd question, wouldn't you?

_From the painting by Burne-Jones_

THE FIRST DAY OF CREATION
]

THE MYSTERIOUS PRINCESS HIDDEN IN THE BUD

So it is and has been from the beginning. We can see the _results_ of changes of one thing into another but never just how the changing is done. While it is no longer believed that species were given a certain form in the beginning and that they have always kept that form, it is still true that each species comes into being from some unseen cause--"all of a sudden," as it were. Because species thus seem to vary of themselves, and not for any reason that we can see these changes are called "spontaneous variations." Always back of the material nature we can see is a nature that is not material; a part of nature that, like the mind of man, we can neither see nor hear nor feel nor know by any of our five senses. Some Unseen Power forms the baby plant out of the seed; some power changes the leaves hidden away in the bud into the petals of the flower. When the leaves gather to form the bud, like little hands playing "button, button, who's got the button," where do you suppose the flower is? It _isn't_. It has not yet begun to be. But soon, as if some magician had waved his wand and said "Presto! Change!" the pink petals begin to form there in the dark of the cup and, first thing we know, out steps Miss Blossom, all in her pink and gold like a princess dressed for a ball!

But always hidden in a mystery these changes take place. We can peep into the growing bud as often as we like and we will never catch the fairies making the dress, nor the princess putting it on. We always see the thing after it is done!

WONDERFUL ART BUT WHERE IS THE ARTIST?

Another thing: How do the fairies of Roseland remember every spring just how a rose looked, when the roses of last year have been dead and gone so long? You see they work without a model, something great artists seldom do; and in some kinds of work, as busts and portraits and landscapes, never do at all. Even the most powerful microscope doesn't show any pattern in the seed for the seed to go by in growing into the finished plant; or in an egg to tell it what kind of a bird it is expected to be. No, not the trace of a pattern. What then, guides the growth of the seed; of an oak, say, so that it finally and always takes the family form? Some Power, evidently, as intelligent as the power that moves the hand of the human artist when he paints that oak into his landscape. How many of us have stopped to think that not only in the world of mind but in the material world itself, all forms of _power_ are as invisible as the fairies that work unseen in the rosebud and the little birds' egg and the big rock? All power--what we call steam power, wind power, electric power and the rest--are not only unseen but unseeable, unfeelable, untastable. We know steam power only when heat gets into the water and makes steam; electric power only when it gets into a wire or a dynamo; or, passing by unseen ways through the air, moves the wireless telegraph receiver; gravity power only when it moves something as the water of a waterfall; or when it is helping to hold things--the earth and the other worlds--in their appointed paths.

HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY

You can easily see why evolution is the most talked about of
all phases of science--of the study of this wonderful world we
live in. One reason is it's such an astonishing thing in itself,
this relationship of all forms of life, trees, kittens, birds,
and everything; another reason is that in reading the books on
evolution you're taken into every field of knowledge and into the
most curious and striking aspect of things in those fields. Could
anything be stranger, for example, than a little theatre in a
chicken's egg, over which pass strange shadowy forms that seem to
retell, in a kind of moving picture show, the story of how one form
of life developed out of another?

Drummond's "Ascent of Man" tells about that and covers the whole
subject of evolution. It is one of the books which no one who has
heard of this wonderful story of life should fail to read. Doctor
Drummond's way of telling the story is very attractive. Readers
from the Eighth Grade up to the Eightieth will delight in it,
and they won't stop until they read it from cover to cover. I'll
guarantee that!

Then take such a book as "The World of Life," by Wallace. "Alice in
Wonderland" is nothing to it. Here are some of the things you will
find in it:

How there got to be different kinds of rabbits and what islands
have to do with it.

(Islands are almost as prominent in the story of evolution as they
are in the story of adventure. There are Robinson Crusoes until you
can't rest!)

How the pig in the struggle of life won out as usual.

Why the peacock has such a fine tail and how he overdid it.

How the elephant saved his life by lengthening his nose.

How the birds traded their teeth for feathers.

How shelled creatures coiled and uncoiled their shells.

Why we miss the "missing links." (As you go into this subject of
evolution you will hear a good deal about missing links.)

How they know butterfly wings are made first and the coloring and
patterns laid on afterward.

How much of a butterfly's beauty is probably known to the
butterflies themselves.

How Nature seems to make things just to be pretty.

And these are just a few of the things in _one_ of Doctor Wallace's
books.[60]

[Footnote 60: In addition to all this curious and absolutely reliable information that ought to be interesting to every one is the fact that Wallace shows in "The World of Life" how there must have been Mind and Purpose back of it all. Doctor Wallace was a great traveller as well as a great student of nature--one of the most famous in the history of science. His works include: "Travels on the Amazon and the Rio Negro," "The Malay Archipelago," "Natural Selection," "Darwinism," "Island Life and the Geographic Distribution of Animals."

There are so many books on this biggest of all nature topics--Evolution--that they make quite a library in themselves. The most famous of these books is Darwin's "Origin of Species," and it is not at all hard to understand. Other books bearing directly or indirectly on evolution are "Animals of the Past," by Lucas, "Creatures of Other Days," by Hutchinson, Fiske's "Destiny of Man," and "Evolution and Religion." A book for older readers--one of the latest and most comprehensive treatments of the subject--is Osborn's "Origin and Evolution of Life."]

Then he was such a fine man personally. Why, what do you think
he did? Although he thought out the principle of evolution
independently of Darwin, and wrote an essay on it before Darwin
had ever given his views to the world, yet after Darwin's "Origin
of Species"[61] came out Wallace gave Darwin all the credit,
and in his own autobiography always referred to the theory of
evolution as the "Darwinian Theory." Yet Wallace had a very good
reason for taking this generous attitude, as you will see from his
autobiography and other writings, and you are quite likely to find
the reason in articles on Darwin or Wallace or Evolution.

[Footnote 61: Of "The Origin of Species" it has been said that no work ever produced so profound a change in the opinions of mankind.]

The relations of Darwin and Wallace furnish one of the finest
examples in history of the best thing in the world--human
friendship.

Of course, like so many other great men, Wallace was one of those
boys whose minds never grow old. Read in his autobiography how on
the day he first discovered a new species of butterfly it gave him
a violent headache, and he had to go to bed to get rid of it and
quiet his nerves--he was that worked up!

Darwin was much the same sort of a man. Everything in the world was
interesting to him. He wrote a whole book about "Fish Worms," for
example. And although probably the most famous man in the history
of natural science he was as humble as could be, always looking for
the truth and ready to accept criticisms no matter how much they
might upset his own previous conclusions, provided these opposing
views were supported by evidence. Of course you will want to know
more about his life, and you will find more in the "Life and
Letters of Charles Darwin," edited by his son.

How do you suppose this boy began being a great man--by collecting
beetles! Beetles and outdoor sport were his chief delight.

USE OF THE INDEX

SOME THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH THIS INDEX

I shouldn't be surprised if you thought that an index was the dullest part of a book.

But it all depends! As a matter of fact, with your help, I am sure I can make this index of ours one of the most interesting things in the whole story; for, like the H. & S., it gives you a chance to "come into the game." The mind enjoys books and grows upon them much as the body grows on food, but, as in the case of both food and books--and books are food--the good you get depends not only on the food but _how you season it and eat it_. You can't expect _everything_ of the cook!

Everybody knows, of course, how to use an index to look things up once in a while and it saves time if the index not only tells the page on which a given subject is referred to, but conveys some idea of what that reference is about, as this index tries to do. If, for example, you are studying the Alpine regions in school you may already have covered the question of how flowing water carves mountain valleys, but you may not have had anything about why the Alps don't run north and south, as so many of earth's great ranges do; and so what could be a more interesting thing for you to take into those delightful class discussions?

Your teacher knows, although you may not have realized it, that these class talks and debates by the pupils themselves are _the big thing_ in modern teaching. The best education, we know nowadays, isn't the mere cramming down of facts, as people used to think. _It's training in thinking, and in standing on one's own feet!_

But memory training is important too; and an index is the best thing in the world for that. Take some subject you're studying in school--mountains, for example--they're always studying such big things as mountains, the work of rivers, and so on; or if they aren't to-day they will be tomorrow. Look at the references _as questions to yourself_ and see how well you can answer them: "How do mountains help make water-gates for the rivers?" and "Why do they have earthquakes in regions where mountains haven't got done with their growing?"

Then you can have a lot of fun with these questions at home and with boy friends, after you have read the book together. For instance: Just how _did_ the pebbles help dig the Grand Canyon? And that's a poser for many grown people too--people who've travelled and met the Grand Canyon face to face! Try it on Father. Yes, and Teacher too. There are none of her boys that a teacher is so proud of as the boys that have initiative--_go-aheaditiveness_--and can _ask_ good questions as well as answer them.

But, best of all, you can find no end of things to write about for your language work in school and for the little books of your own that I've already suggested in the H. & S. Take the subject of pebbles, for example. Although this whole book has to do with the life and adventures of pebbles, I haven't put the facts together in just the way _you_ will if you follow out the references under the heading "Pebbles" in this index. If you don't happen to remember how pebbles act as bankers for the farmers, how they helped make the Great Lakes, built the Grand Canyon, and so on, look these things up and then, as they thus become digested in your mind, write about them in your own way--the way you'd talk if you were telling somebody about it. Do that and you'll _have_ something! one of those things that mothers show to the neighbors, and that teachers show to visitors.

Of course you'll have to have a name for your story and you'll think of plenty: "What One of My Pebbles Told Me," "The Pebbles in the World's Work," "What a Wonderful Thing a Pebble Is!" "Why Common Pebbles are Worth More than Diamonds"; for of course a diamond is a kind of pebble.

GETTING ACQUAINTED WITH YOURSELF

In all this you will not only find you'll have a good time, but, let me tell you, you'll be getting the best part of your education; you'll be getting acquainted with yourself, your undeveloped powers of memory--reasoning--expression. You'll find before you get so very old that one of the most important elements of success, of doing _your_ part in the world's great work of making itself better all the time, is in _having something worth while to say and being able to say it_.

This was the making of the Greeks; and the Greeks, you know, were the most wonderful people that ever were. It all started with old "Know Thyself" Thales of Miletus.

That's what did it!

INDEX

Africa, children's hand-work, illustrating home life of the natives,
including the elephants and the lions, 168

Agassiz, Louis, and his stone hut, 43;
adventure in the crevasse, 51;
on the height of ancient glaciers, 123

Air, origin of, 16;
how corals get their breath, 225

Alaska, the flowers and the snow line, 44

Albany, Atlantic tides at, 221

Alleghany Mountains, birth of, 10

Alps, mountain pastures, 41;
how rain drops helped carve the Alps, 67;
why the Alps don't run north and south, 136;
glacial "autographs" on their walls, 255

Amazon River, its stately flow, 74

Ants, how they help teach men how volcanoes are built, 123

Apollo, how he lighted the world, 2

Appalachian Mountains, birth of, 10

Arabian desert, physiognomy and complexion, 165

Arabian Sea, why its waves salute the Himalayas, 140

Arabs, life in the desert, 183;
and the Simoom, 184

Atlas Mountains, morning beauty of, 163

Atoms, defined, relation to molecules, 110

Aurora, the dawn goddess and her chariot, 2

Avalanches, impulsiveness of;
snap-shot at one in motion, 63

Bad Lands, why so called, 114

Bar Harbor, Nature's remarkable masonry in Castle Rock, 228

Bald Mountains, how they got their crowns shaved off, 26, 28, 123

Beavers, as lake makers, 192

Bedding planes, defined, 217

Bees, and Alpine flowers, 45;
why they hide from the cloud shadows, 56;
shape of honey cells and basaltic columns, 243

Beetles, varieties in desert places, 180;
use of poison gas, 182

Big Round Top Mountain, how it lost its peak, 248

Birds, life in the desert, 178

Bombs (volcanic), what they are and how they are made, 129

Boulders, Agassiz' monument, 54;
travels of Plymouth Rock, 64;
boulders on a New England hill, 145;
why the Indians worshipped a boulder, 146;
the strange stranger on Mount Abu, 147;
as mountain climbers, 147, 152;
why there are no big caves in boulder regions, 148;
how boulders help tell the secret of the Ice Age, 149;
how torrents help shape, 151;
how glaciers carry, 151;
how boulders ride on the water, 153;
how Jack Frost builds boulder walls, 154;
how the sun helps shape boulders, 155;

Geikie on the story told by a conglomerate boulder, 155;
Ruskin on boulders in art, 157;
why boulders sometimes jump up from the ground, 158;
how rain drops split boulders, 171;
how boulders shiver their skins off, 170;
boulders in the rock mills of the sea, 216;
how perched boulders are perched, 149;
the perched boulder in Bronx Park, in New York City, and its
autograph, 250

Bridal Veil Falls, how it got its name and why it hurries to "catch the
train," 74

Butterflies, how they help in Alpine flower gardening, 46;
why they hide from the cloud shadows, 56

Cactus, the desert water bottle, 174

Cactus wren, how she bars her front door against her bad neighbors, 177

Cæsar, Julius, his literary style compared to that of Mr. Glacier, 254;
how he and Mr. Glacier went into winter quarters, 256

Canada, her sea terraces for the gannets, 223

Canada thistles, and the Siberian "wind witches," 178

Canyons, deepened by glaciers, 26, 37;
how pebbles helped make the Grand Canyon, 82;
how long a mile is--straight down! 87;
how the Grand Canyon swallows you up, 88;
how rivers wrote the history of the Grand Canyon and how they cut the
leaves, 88

Caravan, the marching camels and their shadows, 185

Carbonic acid gas, and air making, 16;
how it helped make coal with one hand and the Ice Age with the
other, 20;
how it helps the volcanoes feed the world, 128

Carpathian Mountains, why they do not border the sea, 138;
their ups and downs under the sea, 230

Castle Head, a remarkable example of Nature's masonry, 228

Catskill Mountains, how they were made, 116

Cavemen, a caveman's art note on mammoths, 22;
why they were the handsomest men of their day, 267;
the joyous lesson they helped teach, 269

Caves, relation to natural bridges, 85;
why large ones are never found in boulder regions, 148;
their sightless inhabitants, 186

Centipede, his numerous feet and objectionable character 62;
how the trap door spider slams the door in his face, 182

Centrifugal force, and the birth of worlds, 4;
and the direction of mountain ranges, 137

Ceratosaurus, his dreadfulness and his name, 23;
and Nature's dream of the coming of man, 23;
one of our queer cousins, 264

Civilization, its constant advance, but with ups and downs, 269;
the civilization that Mother made, 270

Coal, did it help bring on the Ice Age? 20;
bad effect of coal making on plant and animal life--volcanoes to the
rescue! 226;
coal seams and the records of ancient life, 245

Colorado River, how it dug the Grand Canyon, 88

Conglomerate rock, why it is called "pudding stone," 96;
conglomerate boulders as historians, 155;
how made in the sea mills, 227

Continents, how they rose out of the sea, 8;
how the fact that they are still rising helps the rivers get back to
sea, 75;
the continents and Nature's accident insurance, 262

Copernicus, and the discovery that there are worlds of worlds, 4

Coral islands and reefs, how the sea helps the corals build them, 225

Coyotes, as ventriloquists, 179;
their night songs, 179;
how they get a living, 180

Crater Lake, the blue lake in the volcano's mouth, 194, 195

Crevasse, origin of the word, 51;
what a crevasse looks like, 51, 53;
Agassiz' adventure in, 51;
voices of, 54; their water-mills, 55;
picture of a crevasse swallowing an avalanche, 63

Crystallization and the fairy land of change, 93;
how the pebble caught cold and what came of it, 94;
crystals in sugar and granite, 94;
the great melting pot and the remaking of the rocks, 96;
how old rocks hatch new ones by sitting on one another, 96;
how mountain making helps, 97;
how Mother Nature uses salt and soda in cooking rocks over and how she
keeps these materials handy, 99;
an illustration of how men of science study things out for the fun of
it, 104;
the crystal fairies and their curious ways, 106;
how crystals help tell about dikes, 243

Dead Sea, its deadness and how it died, 207;
and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, 209;
what "Lot's Wife" looks like to-day, 210;
ancient history on the Dead Sea's walls, 249

Deltas, why delta river mouths always multiply by two, 167

Descent of Man, how man has risen as he descended, 269

Desert, origin of Lybian (myth), 2;
enigmas of, 161;
the desert and the Sphinx, 162;
physiography and coloring, 163;
"Baths of the Damned," 165;
river "skeletons," 166;
indications of former heavier rainfall, 166;
Roman aqueducts, 166;
"sand roses," 168;
how the desert makes its sands, 168;
its trade-mark on its sand grains, 172;
why deserts are so cold at night, 170;
how a simoom looks from the outside, 173;
how it begins business, 184;
the plant people of the desert, 174-175;
how the Rose of Jericho goes to sea, 176;
the cactus wren and how she bars her front door against her bad
neighbors, 177;
the "wind witches" of the steppes, 178;
animal life in the desert, 178;
the coyote as a ventriloquist, his night song, 179;
bird life, 180;
why the desert humming-birds have rusty coats, 180;
how the trap-door spider slams the door in the centipede's face, 182;
a beetle that uses poison gas, 182;
wonderful flight of the vulture, 183;
a day with the Arabs in the Sahara desert, 183;
the cat, the dog, the Arab, and the struggle for life, 187, 188

Diamonds, form of their crystals, 107

Dikes, what one in New York City tells about marble making, 97;
the iron walls near Spanish Peak, 235, 241;
dikes in the rocks at Marblehead, 242;
how dikes get their driving power, 244

Dinosaurs, their dreadfulness, their habits and their family name, 23

Diplodocus, his name, his gentle nature, his defensive tail and how it
helped him at his meals, 24

Domes (Mt.), 123

Drift theory, 120

Drowned valleys, 212

Drumlin, why an Irish boy would know what "drumlin" means, 122

Dunes, 163

Earth, story of the spoiled boy who set it afire, 2;
how much truth science finds in the Phaeton myth, 3;
theories as to the earth's origin and how they compare with the Bible
story, 17;
watching worlds in the making, 5, 6;
the sun and his pebble worlds, 6;
how you can watch the world turn round, 7;
how the continents came up out of the sea, 8, 14;
lands the seas have swallowed, 11;
reasons for thinking the continents won't go under again, 12;
how earth's slowing up helped make mountains, 137

Earthquakes, how growing mountains make them, 86;
earthquakes that travel incog., 158;
how earthquakes are recorded in the veins of marble, 239;
earthquakes and the earth's "faults," 243

Echoes, Arab superstitions about, 187

Electrons, how they act as messenger boys of the universe, 110

Emerson, on the industries of England, 214

England, her heavy losses of land to the sea, 214;
how her drowned rivers helped make her great, 224

Eskers, defined, 122

Esparto grass, 176

Europe, how most of her rivers get their start, 73;
her ragged outline and the "transgressions" of the sea, 219;
Europe's geological biography and her mountain chains, 230

Evolution, was Nature dreaming of man's legs and arms when she designed
the dinosaurs? 23;
"some call it Evolution and others call it God," 260;
answer of Science to the question "whither," 261;
why nothing "happens," in the great course of things--The Accident
Insurance System of the Universe, 262;
kinship of kittens and apple trees, 264;
universal acceptance of the evolution theory, 264;
the old "special creation" theory, 265;
and the mysterious special creation theory that Science has
substituted, 274;
facts that support the evolution theory;
the story of changing forms recorded in the rocks, 265;
the "rabbit" that turned into a horse, 266;
as to men being descended from monkeys, 267;
how evolution proves the world is getting better, 268;
how man has risen as he descended, 269;
the world that Mother made, 270

Family, the, and civilization, 271

"Faults," geological, defined, 243

Finland, its butterflies, and the left-over butterflies of the Ice
Ages, 48

Fiords, how they were made by the Old Men of the Mountain, 254

Florida, her sympathetic sister lakes, 200

Folds, how the story of the crumpling of mountains is told in the veins
of marble, 237

Fossils, how they help tell the story of marble, 100

Frost, how it helped build the stone "Temple of the Winds," 33;
how it builds boulder walls, 154

Fujiyama, Mt., why it resembles Mount Rainier, 124

Galileo, and the discovery that there are worlds of worlds, 4

Geikie, on the conglomerate boulder as an historian, 230

Geodes, Nature's pebble jewel boxes and how they are made, 101

Geography, when all our geography was at the bottom of the sea, 8;
how they study geography in Boston on rainy days, 68

Geysers, and the geyser basins, 165

Giant's Causeway, its architecture, 243

Gila monster, 181

Glacial Period. (See Ice Ages.)

Glacial tables, how stones go walking in glacier land, 62

Glacier Mills, 55

Glaciers, how snow changes itself to ice, 26;
glaciers in their "working clothes," 29;
how to make glaciers and icebergs in the schoolroom, 32;
how glaciers helped make the gray stone "Temple of the Winds," 33;
how the glaciers of the Ice Ages made the Great Lakes, 34;
songs of the glacier and how it sings, 42, 56;
a day's visit with the Alpine glaciers, 49;
the crevasses and the adventure of Agassiz, 51;
how long it took Agassiz to determine the nature of glacial
movements, 52;
why the peasants think the glacier has a soul, 54;
Mr. Glacier's caterpillar tractor, 62;
how the glaciers start Europe's rivers in business, 73;
how pebbles tell on what part of a glacier they travelled, 251

Golden Gate, entrance to San Francisco harbor, how it was made, 224

Gorges, 26, 82

Grand Canyon, 88

Granite, ancient lineage and social standing among earth's rocks, 17;
the Granites and the Fairyland of Change, 94;
how they crystallize their neighbors, 103;
how they help make sand, 170

Gravitation, how it pulls the worlds into roundness, 5;
and helps them to grow up, 8;
how it helps sea waves to salute the mountains, 139;
equally careful in handling big worlds and little seeds, 261;
like all power it is invisible and intangible, 276

Great Basin, records of the two great lakes it used to hold, 249

Great Lakes, how they were made in the Ice Ages, 34;
an Ice Age lake that was greatest of all, 193;
tides in the Great Lakes and tides in a teacup, 201;
how the glaciers of the Ice Age tipped the Great Lakes up, 253

Great Salt Lake, ancient weather records on its walls, 249

Greek civilization, one of the things that do not die, 270

Harbor engineering of the rivers and the sea, 221, 222

Hieroglyphics, picture language of the Egyptians and how it was read, 258

Himalaya Mountains, glacial table on, a lesson in picture-reading, 59;
why some of the Himalayas are called "hills," 117

Horse, evolution of, 266

Hot Springs (cause of), 165

Hudson River, action of the tides, 221;
the Palisades, 241

Hydrogen, and the making of earth's air, 16

Ice Ages, theories as to their origin, 20;
the three union stations of the ice trains, 27;
how the glaciers put the Missouri River together, 29;
how they pushed the Mississippi about, 30;
how they turned rivers around and made waterfalls for New England, 31;
how they chiselled out stone bowls for the Great Lakes, 34;
how they made other lakes, 194;
the thousand-year clock at Niagara Falls and what it tells about the
Ice Age, 35;
how the glaciers set Niagara Falls up in business, 36;
Muir's eloquent tribute to the marvellous "busy work" of the
snowflakes, 37;
how the Ice Age glaciers went off and left the butterflies and the
flowers in the Alps, 47;
how the butterflies missed the train, 48;
how Agassiz discovered the Ice Age, 52;
how the glaciers moved the hills about, 117;
travels of the boulders and how the glaciers rounded them, 146, 155;
why there are no big caves in glaciated regions, 148;
relation of the Ice Ages to the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee, 206;
Burroughs's theory as to future Ice Ages, 219;
what rain-drop autographs tell of the Ice Age, 246;
a perched boulder and its autograph in a New York City park, 250;
records of the Ice Age glaciers compared with Cæsar's Commentaries--
curious similarities, 252

Icebergs, how to make them in the schoolroom, 32;
how the icebergs of the Ice Age gave the boulders a ride, 153

Ice wells, huge ice water tanks that the Ice Age glaciers left, 49

Indian Ocean, why its waves rise to salute the Himalayas, 140

Islands, oceanic, the tops of volcanoes, 133;
islands on the Maine coast and how they were made, 212;
how the sea helps the corals build their islands, 225

"Joints," places where rocks don't join, how made, 33;
how they help make "perched rocks," 60;
joints in the "Marble Rocks" at Jabalpur, 105;
joints and the work of the sea's rock mills, 216;
use of joints in Nature's stone architecture, 228

Jordan River, why it was born partly grown, 73:
why the making of the Jordan Valley was the death of the Dead Sea, 206

Jungfrau, summer pastures on, 41;
its beauty, 44

Jupiter, how as rain god he put out the world, 3;
place of the planet in the Solar system, 6

Keewatin, one of the central stations of the Ice Age, 28

Kentucky, the sink holes in the cave regions, 200

Kepler and the discovery that there are worlds of worlds, 4

Kettle lakes, how the glaciers of the Ice Age made them, 196

Labrador, one of the central stations of the Ice Age, 28;
how the butterflies of Labrador tell that their ancestors missed the
train, 49

Lakes, the Ice Age lake and the "Temple of the Winds," 33;
how the Ice Age glaciers made the Great Lakes, 34;
how they helped Lake Erie in making Niagara Falls, 36;
the sleep of lakes and how it brightens them up, 80;
how Mirror Lake shows Mount Rainier how beautiful he is, 130;
how, with Jack Frost's help, lakes build boulder walls, 134;
the empty lake beds of the desert, 162;
"trade-marks" on lake-shore sand, 173;
how lakes are born, 192;
moods of lakes, 198;
why the ducks overlook some lakes, 198;
where mountain lakes get their coloring, 199;
sympathetic action of sister lakes, 200;
how some lakes act as barometers, 201;
tides in lakes, 201;
why lake storms are particularly dangerous, 202;
peculiarity of storms on the Sea of Galilee, 202;
and of storms on mountain lakes, 203;
how lakes grow old and pass away, 204;
why lilies come to dying lakes, 204;
the procession of the trees to the margins of dying lakes, 204;
why they have a regular marching order, 204;
the Dead Sea and how it died, 205;
what science says of the legend of Sodom and Gomorrah, 209;
"Lot's Wife" as she looks to-day, 210;
records of ancient weather on the walls of Great Salt Lake, 249;
how the Great Lakes were tipped up and how they tell about it, 253

Lake Agassiz, a great lake of yesterday which could swallow all the Great
Lakes of to-day, 193

Lake Baikal, its great depth, 193

Lake Erie, how the glaciers helped it make Niagara Falls, 36

Lake Superior (size), 193

Laplace, his great theory of the origin of worlds, 4

Lapland, strange stories its butterflies tell, 48

Laurentian Highlands, how they rose out of the sea, 9