Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/280

 The facts are just these: my invitation to Prof. Wright and Dr. Sprecher to visit the island with me was wholly a matter of courtesy. While there I consulted them as to the best method of protecting the groove from the incursions of the Vandal curiosity-hunters, and also as to the best form of conveying the title, to be held in perpetuity for the benefit of science; and all of the surveying that was done by those gentlemen they did with their eyes, as they stood admiring that beautiful and wonderful work of Nature's laws.

I take pleasure in saying that I have completed the work of uncovering fifty feet of the groove, leaving fifty feet still covered to the depth of about twelve feet with clay, gravel, and fragments of the lime rock, just as it was left by Nature's laws when their work was finished, and the tools with which that work was done—granite bowlders—lie scattered over the island, and on the mainland, as far west as the Indiana line, there to rest, imperishable and unchanged, until Nature shall again take them up to do its work.

Were yon to see that groove at this time I feel sure that you would pronounce it to be the most beautiful and wonderful evidence of the glacial movement that has ever been brought to the notice of civilized man.

On the 237th page of Prof. Wright's Ice Age there is an engraving which gives an imperfect view of the easterly end of the great groove, as it appeared before it was uncovered. And on the 238th page of the same book there is an engraving of another grooved rock, which is a little north of the great groove, from which I had taken off about a hundred feet before the photograph was taken, and sent to various scientific institutions. This, too, you will see is a most perfect and beautiful specimen of Nature's work.

I beg that you will pardon me for troubling you with this letter, for I feel that it is due to my friends and also to myself that the errors which I have noted should be corrected.

And, now that I have nothing further to say on the subject which prompted this letter, I will add a few words regarding The Popular Science Monthly. I have been a subscriber from the time of the issue of the first number, and I now have thirty volumes bound; and I take pleasure in saying that I think that there are no other thirty volumes to be found which contain such a vast and varied amount of useful information, or which are so well calculated to educate men in matters which advance our civilization, as those.

And more—they are a most noble monument to "Edward L. Youmans," more beautiful and enduring than marble or granite.

[The paragraph noticed by Mr. Younglove was compiled from a slip which was sent to the Monthly from a Cleveland paper. The language of the slip was followed, without supposing that the word "surveyed" was meant to be used in a technical sense, but rather perhaps in its original sense of looked-over, or perhaps as meaning that Drs. Wright and Sprecher had the ground surveyed. The change of our correspondent's name to Youngblood was one that we much regret; but it was also one that might naturally occur in transcription or type-setting and be overlooked by a stranger to the person concerned; for to a stranger no suggestion of error would be likely to occur.]



ORTY years ago or less the apostle of the hour was Carlyle, the fashionable gospel was the gospel of force, and the hope of the world was supposed to lie in the advent of certain heroes, strong, resolute men, who were to heal our social and other diseases by the prescriptions of a benevolent despotism. The gospel of force and all its accompanying ideas have somewhat fallen into discredit to-day. These latter times have proved very unfavorable to strong men, or at least to those who have tried to pose in that character.

Louis Napoleon was a strong man: he greatly dared on a certain 2d of December just forty years ago, and for a time he seemed to be a living justification of Carlylism; but the sage of Chelsea lived to see the Man of Destiny cast down from his high pre-eminence and every vestige of his rule obliterated by an indignant people. Bismarck was a strong man, full of an almost reckless courage and utterly impatient of criticism and opposition; yet how sudden and complete was his fall! Thiers wished to play the part of the strong man in France, and so did Marshal 