Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel | Page 2

NOT STRUCK BY THE COMET 93 THE GREAT COMET OF 1811
95 CRAG AND TAIL 98 SOLAR SPECTRUM 105 SECTION AT ST.
ACHEUL 122 THE ENGIS SKULL 124 THE NEANDERTHAL
SKULL 125 PLUMMET FROM SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY,
CALIFORNIA 180 {p. v} COMET OF 1862 137 COURSE OF
DONATI'S COMET 157 THE PRIMEVAL STORM 220 THE
AFRITE IN THE PILLAR 270 DAHISH OVERTAKEN BY
DIMIRIAT 272 EARTHEN VASE, FOUND IN THE CAVE OF
FURFOOZ, 347 BELGIUM PRE-GLACIAL MAN'S PICTURE OF
THE MAMMOTH 349 PRE-GLACIAL MAN'S PICTURE OF
REINDEER 350 PRE-GLACIAL MAN'S PICTURE OF THE HORSE
351 SPECIMEN OF PRE-GLACIAL CARVING 352 STONE IMAGE
FOUND IN OHIO 353 COPPER COIN, FOUND ONE HUNDRED
AND FOURTEEN FEET 356 UNDER GROUND, IN ILLINOIS

{front} COPPER COIN, FOUND ONE HUNDRED AND
FOURTEEN FEET 356 UNDER GROUND, IN ILLINOIS {back}
BIELA'S COMET, SPLIT IN TWO 409 SECTION ON THE
SCHUYLKILL 432 {p. 1}
RAGNAROK:
THE AGE OF FIRE AND GRAVEL.


PART I.
The Drift


CHAPTER I.
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DRIFT.
READER,--Let us reason together:--
What do we dwell on? The earth. What part of the earth? The latest
formations, of course. We live upon the top of a mighty series of
stratified rocks, laid down in the water of ancient seas and lakes, during
incalculable ages, said, by geologists, to be from ten to twenty miles in
thickness.
Think of that! Rock piled over rock, from the primeval granite upward,
to a height four times greater than our highest mountains, and every
rock stratified like the leaves of a book; and every leaf containing the
records of an intensely interesting history, illustrated with engravings,
in the shape of fossils, of all forms of life, from the primordial cell up
to the bones of man and his implements.
But it is not with the pages of this sublime volume

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we have to deal in this book. It is with a vastly different but equally
wonderful formation.
Upon the top of the last of this series of stratified rocks we find THE
DRIFT.
What is it?
Go out with me where yonder men are digging a well. Let us observe
the material they are casting out.
First they penetrate through a few inches or a foot or two of surface soil;
then they enter a vast deposit of sand, gravel, and clay. It may be fifty,
one hundred, five hundred, eight hundred feet, before they reach the
stratified rocks on which this drift rests. It covers whole continents. It is
our earth. It makes the basis of our soils; our railroads cut their way
through it; our carriages drive over it; our cities are built upon it; our
crops are derived from it; the water we drink percolates through it; on it
we live, love, marry, raise children, think, dream, and die; and in the
bosom of it we will be buried.
Where did it come from?
That is what I propose to discuss with you in this work,--if you will
have the patience to follow me.
So far as possible, [as I shall in all cases speak by the voices of others] I
shall summon my witnesses that you may cross-examine them. I shall
try, to the best of my ability, to buttress every opinion with adequate
proofs. If I do not convince, I hope at least to interest you.
And to begin: let us understand what the Drift is, before we proceed to
discuss its origin.
In the first place, it is mainly unstratified; its lower formation is
altogether so. There may be clearly defined strata here and there in it,

but they are such as a tempest might make, working in a dust-heap:
picking up a patch here and laying it upon another there. But there
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are no continuous layers reaching over any large extent of country.
Sometimes the material has been subsequently worked over by rivers,
and been distributed over limited areas in strata, as in and around the
beds of streams.
But in the lower, older, and first-laid-down portion of the Drift, called
in Scotland "the till," and in other countries "the hard-pan," there is a
total absence of stratification.
James Geikie says:
"In describing the till, I remarked that the irregular manner in which the
stones were scattered through that deposit imparted to it a confused and
tumultuous appearance. The clay does not arrange itself in layers or
beds, but is distinctly unstratified."[1]
"The material consisted of earth, gravel, and stones, and also in some
places broken trunks or branches of trees. Part of it was deposited in a
pell-mell or unstratified condition during the progress of the period,
and part either stratified or unstratified in the opening part of the next
period when the ice melted."[2]
"The unstratified drift may be described as a heterogeneous