Bluegrass.
’Tis the very romance of science.
Whetstone.
But, Professor, what was the glacial period?
Scythe.
Well, sir, the glacial period was an epoch when, from a business point of view, ice was cheaper than dirt. Had the apparition then occurred, man could have gone all over the globe on skates. But as it was a vast ball of ice, he would probably have slipped off into space, and nothing more would have been heard of him. And so this star of ice for countless ages rolled on through the sky like a big snow-ball; but at last the great electric sun struck the earth on the equator, which accounts for the equatorial bulge which exists to this day. Then commenced the greatest drama of the elements ever witnessed upon our planet. The vast ice-fields were riven in twain, with terrific reports which reverberated through the heavenly spaces, and to which our present thunder is but as an elemental whisper. Icebergs formed, and in fantastic and sublime shapes, towering mountain high and illuminated by the sun, floated down towards the equator.
Whetstone.
Go on, don’t stop; go on.
Scythe.
Then commenced the great oscillation of the land-masses; then the eruptive rocks and sedimentary strata were moved from their foundations. Then occurred the geologic epoch of the denudation and washdown of hills and mountains, and then were formed the ocean floors, the islands, and the continental areas which we inhabit.