Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky | Page 9

was for the time the floor of the ocean, until further droppings of material out of the waters made a fresh layer, covering up the one below.
While each layer was thus in succession the top layer of the building, and at the same time the floor of the ocean, animals lived and died in the ocean, and their remains sank to the bottom, resting upon the sediment floor. Thousands of such dead remains disappeared, crumbling into fine dust and mingling with the waters, but here and there one was caught captive by the half-liquid mud, and was quickly covered and preserved from decay. And still the building went on, and still layer after layer was placed, till many fossils lay deep down beneath the later-formed layers; and when at length, by slow or quick upheaval of the ground, this sea-bottom became a mountain, the little fossils were buried within the body of that mountain. So wondrously the matter appears to have come about.
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Another difficulty with respect to the stratified rocks has to be thought of. All these layers or deposits of gravel, sand, or earth, on the floor of the ocean, would naturally be horizontal--that is, would lie flat, one upon another. In places the ocean-floor might slant, or a crevice or valley or ridge might break the smoothness of the deposit. But though the layers might partake of the slant, though the valley might have to be filled, though the ridge might have to be surmounted, still the general tendency of the waves would be to level the dropping deposits into flat layers.
Then how is it that when we examine the strata of rocks in our neighborhood, wherever that neighborhood may be, we do not find them so arranged? Here, it is true, the lines for a space are nearly horizontal, but there, a little way farther on, they are perpendicular; here they are bent, and there curved; here they are slanting, and there crushed and broken.
This only bears out what has been already said about the Book of Geology. It has been bent and disturbed, crushed and broken.
Great powers have been at work in this crust of our earth. Continents have been raised, mountains have been upheaved, vast masses of rock have been scattered into fragments. Here or there we may find the layers arranged as they were first laid down; but far more often we discover signs of later disturbance, either slow or sudden, varying from a mere quiet tilting to a violent overturn.
[Illustration: EXAMPLE OF DISTURBANCE OF THE EARTH'S LAYERS.]
So the Book of Geology is a torn and disorganized volume, not easy to read.
Yet, on the other hand, these very changes which have taken place are a help to the geologist.
It may seem at first sight as if we should have an easier task, if the strata were all left lying just as they were first formed, in smooth level layers, one above another. But if it were so, we could know very little about the lower layers.
We might indeed feel sure, as we do now, that the lowest layers were the oldest and the top layers the newest, and that any fossils found in the lower layers must belong to an age farther back than any fossils found in the upper layers.
So much would be clear. And we might dig also and burrow a little way down, through a few different kinds of rock, where they were not too thick. But that would be all. There our powers would cease.
Now how different. Through the heavings and tiltings of the earth's crust, the lower layers are often pushed quite up to the surface, so that we are able to examine them and their fossils without the least difficulty, and very often without digging underground at all.
You must not suppose that the real order of the rocks is changed by these movements, for generally speaking it is not. The lower kinds are rarely if ever found placed over the upper kinds; only the ends of them are seen peeping out above ground.
It is as if you had a pile of copy-books lying flat one upon another, and were to put your finger under the lowest and push it up. All those above would be pushed up also, and perhaps they would slip a little way down, so that you would have a row of edges showing side by side, at very much the same height. The arrangement of the copy-books would not be changed, for the lowest would still be the lowest in actual position; but a general tilting or upheaval would have taken place.
Just such a tilting or upheaval has taken place again and again with the rocks forming our earth-crust. The edges of the lower rocks often show side by side