The Strange Adventures of a PebbleHawksworth, Hallam
Science
The Strange Adventures of a Pebble
Hawksworth, Hallam
Geology -- Juvenile literature; Physical geography -- Juvenile literature
_From Norton's "Elements of Geology."
By permission of Ginn and Company_
ONE PEBBLE IN ITS TIME PLAYS MANY PARTS
Here are pebbles faceted in different ways by glaciers. No. 1 has
six facets. No. 4, originally a rounded river pebble, has been
rubbed down to one flat face. Nos. 3 and 5 are battered little
travellers faceted on one side only. Notice how No. 5 got his face
scratched just as I did.
]
[Illustration: PEBBLE FACETED BY WIND-BLOWN SAND
You remember how the glaciers ground flat faces or facets on the
pebbles, don't you? Here is another example of Nature's lapidary
work, but here she has used wind and sand instead of ice.
]
V. A Greater Cæsar and His Commentaries
Well, there he is again, you see, Mr. Glacier of the Ice Age. He's
always turning up, everywhere you go in earth history. As Shakespere's
Mr. Cassius said of Mr. Julius Cæsar, "he bestrode the world." And,
like the Roman Cæsar, this Cæsar wrote the story of his own exploits;
but although a vastly greater conqueror than the famous Roman, he was
even more modest. Cæsar and his Commentaries, our High School friend
will tell you, nearly always refers to himself in the third person;
but in his commentaries on his travels and exploits the Old Man of the
Mountain didn't even use his own name. He left the editors of his
manuscript to find out who he was.
HOW THE GREAT LAKES WERE TIPPED UP
One of the most striking things he did, of which he wrote the record on
the walls, was to tip up the Great Lakes. You remember just how he made
them. Well, it seems that as he started back home he tipped them up.
Suppose you could pick up the vast stone bowls that hold these lakes
and tip them toward the north as easily as you can tip a bowl of water,
what would the water do? It would fall lower along the south shores of
the lakes and rise along the northern shores, wouldn't it? Then suppose
the lakes were kept tipped up in this way for ages, and summer wind
storms and winter tempests dashed waves against their shores, what
would happen? Stone walls rising above the shore would have terraces
cut into them, and the line of these terraces would tilt toward the
north. There are terraces just like that on rocks bordering the Great
Lakes, and the explanation of their tilt is that the lakes themselves
were tipped up, and that the Old Man of the Mountain did the tipping.
The rock crust of the round earth bends under great weight like an
arch. So when the enormous weight of the glaciers of the Ice Age was on
a portion of the arch it bent down. Then, as the glaciers retreated,
the weight of them was shifted northward all the time. Finally when
the glaciers in the region of the lakes had melted quite away the arch
slowly rose into place again and lifted the terraces above the water
line as we see them to-day.
Throughout regions the glaciers visited you find rocks polished like
mirrors; in other cases they are scratched, and in others deeply
grooved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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