Prose Idylls, New and Old by Charles Kingsley
page 78 of 241 (32%)
page 78 of 241 (32%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
found a mere like their old Prussian one, and there founded a tiny
colony for a few generations, till they were eaten up by the savages of the table dwelling; or died out--as many a human family has died out--because they found the world too hard. And lastly, my friend Mr. Brady, well known to naturalists, has found that many forms of Entomastraca are common to the estuaries of the east of England and to those of Holland. It was thus necessary, in order to account for the presence of some of the common animals of the fen, to go back to an epoch of immense remoteness. And how was that great lowland swept away? Who can tell? Probably by no violent convulsion. Slow upheavals, slow depressions, there may have been--indeed must have been--as the sunken fir-forests of Brancaster, and the raised beach of Hunstanton, on the extreme north- east corner of the Wash, testify to this day. But the main agent of destruction has been, doubtless, that same ever-gnawing sea-wash which devours still the soft strata of the whole east coast of England, as far as Flamborough Head; and that great scavenger, the tide-wave, which sweeps the fallen rubbish out to sea twice in every twenty-four hours. Wave and tide by sea, rain and river by land; these are God's mighty mills in which He makes the old world new. And as Longfellow says of moral things, so may we of physical:- 'Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small. Though He sit, end wait with patience, with exactness grinds He all.' |
|