Climate, too, made then its first appearance; climate, named after the sunward obliquity of the Earth, and seeming at times to live down to that characterization. Weather there had been before; pejoratively speaking, nothing but weather. For the downpours in paleologic times must have been exceeded in numbers only by their force. One dull perpetual round of rain was the programme for the day, with absolutely no hope of a happy clearance to-morrow. It was the golden age only for weather prophets whose prognostications could hardly go wrong. With climate, however, it was a very different matter. With polyp corals building reefs almost to the pole (81° 50′),[22] as far north nearly as man has yet by his utmost efforts succeeded in getting, while their fellows were busy at the like industry in the tropics, it is clear that latitude was laughed at and climate even lacked a name. [22] Dana. “Geology.” Another astronomic feature, then for the first time disclosed, was the full significance of the day and the revelation of its cause. While the Earth brooded under perpetual cloud, there could have been but imperfect recognition of day and night. Or perhaps we may put it better by saying that the standard of both was greatly depressed, dull days alternating with nights black as pitch. But the moment the Sun was let in, all this changed, though not in a twinkling. The change came on most gradually. We can see in our mind’s eye the first openings in the great welkin permitting the Earth its initial peeps of the world beyond, and how quickly and tantalously they shut in again like a mid-storm morning which dreams of clearing only to find how drowsy it still is. But eventually the clouds parted afresh and farther, and the Earth began to open its eyes to the universe without. The cause of the clearing, of course, was the falling temperature of the seas. Evaporation went on much less fast as the heat of the water lessened. The whole round of aquatic travel from ocean to air, and back to ocean again, proceeded at an ever slackening pace. And here, if it so please geologists, may be found a reconciling of their demands for time to the relative pittance astronomy has been willing to dole them out, a paltry 50 or 100 millions of years, which like all framers of budgets they have declared utterly insufficient. For in early times the forces at work were greater, and by magnifying the means you quicken the process and contract the Earth’s earlier eras to reasonable limits.