Page:The fairy tales of science.djvu/295

 "once upon a time" the glens of our present mountains were encumbered with glaciers, and that our low lands were entirely submerged. By the action of these glaciers the rocks were scored and rounded, polished and grooved, and masses of rock carried down and heaped into moraines; while great blocks were transported on fragments of those glaciers which dipped into the sea and formed icebergs, being often carried far over the shallow seas and dropped many miles from their parent sites, generally on the banks and shallows (now the hill-tops) which arrested the laden icebergs in their course.

We have said that our moving lands advance with great regularity. Let the reader glance at the illustration which precedes this chapter, and he will find that our artist has represented this motion by the figure of Time using his scythe as an alpen-stock, and sliding along with the glacier upon which he stands.