For everywhere about those Ascot moors, the top of the sands has been
ploughed by shore-ice in winter, as they lay a-wash in the shallow
sea; and over them, in many places, is spread a thin sheet of ice
gravel, more ancient, the best geologists think, than the boulder and
the boulder-clay.
If any of my readers ask how long the period was during which those
sands of Ascot Heath and Aldershot have been laid down, I cannot
tell. But this we can tell. It was long enough to see such changes
in land and sea, that maps representing Europe during the greater
part of that period (as far as we can guess at it) look no more like
Europe than like America or the South Sea Islands. And this we can
tell besides: that that period was long enough for the Swiss Alps to
be lifted up at least 10,000 feet of their present height. And that
was a work which--though God could, if He willed it, have done it in
a single day--we have proof positive was not done in less than ages,
beside which the mortal life of man is as the life of the gnat which
dances in the sun.
And all this, and more--as may be proved from the geology of foreign
countries--happened between the date of the boulder-clay, and that of
the New Red sandstone on which it rests.
IV. THE COAL IN THE FIRE
My dear town-dwelling readers, let me tell you now something of a
geological product well known, happily, to all dwellers in towns, and
of late years, thanks to railroad extension, to most dwellers in
country districts: I mean coal.
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