The story of the Herculean labour by which our country, once as wild and as savage as its early inhabitants the Icenians and Catieuchlanians (and probably with lineaments as barbarous as those of the Coritanian and Trinobant), has been changed to peaceful, fertile meadowlands or tidy arable, is one long romance. To tell it properly would require a book to itself. In this chapter we shall only try to sketch what may have happened on one particular cornfield which exists on the trap-rocks of Kilbarchan, near Glasgow.[68] The reader must bear in mind that even this is a very ambitious attempt! It is an exceedingly difficult undertaking. [68] As the story probably differs in detail for every district, the author is obliged to confine himself to ground which he has actually seen and studied. The subsoil in this particular cornfield (on Pennell Brae) lies upon the trap-rock formed by one of those gigantic lava-flows which cover that part of Renfrewshire. The whole district at that time must have been exactly like Vesuvius during the late eruption. Its scenery in this early miocene period consisted of glowing molten rock, accompanied by flames of fire, electrical storms, clouds of gas, dust, ashes, and superheated steam. [Illustration: THEN-- A landscape in Ancient Britain.] [Illustration: AND NOW The same landscape at the present time. Notice how the outline of the hills has been softened and its shape rounded. The forest has almost vanished and the river is bridged and confined within definite banks; in fact, only the ravine remains much the same.] Every plant and every animal must have been exterminated. That was unfortunate, for, at that time, Pines, Oaks, Guelder Rose, Willows, as well as Sequoias allied to the Mammoth tree and Sassafras, may have lived in Scotland along with tapirs, opossums, marsupials, and other extraordinary beasts. When the lava cooled and became trap-rock, it was at once attacked by frost, by wind, and by rain. Then by a very slow process of colonization, vegetation slowly and gradually crept over the trap-rock and rich mould and plant remains accumulated. At a much later date, there was another wholesale destruction. This time, it was the great Ice Sheet coming down from the Highland hills. Probably it drove heavily over the top of Pennell Brae and worked up into fine mud and powder every vestige of the miocene vegetation. The very rocks themselves would be scratched, polished, and rounded off. When the glaciers melted away and left the surface free, it would consist of these rounded rocks alternating with clay-filled hollows. The trap-rock below would be covered by a subsoil due to particles of trap, of Highland and other mud, with remains of the miocene vegetation. Upon this surface, frost, wind, sunshine, and rain would again begin to perform their work.