The Story of the Living Machine

us to-day. A more extraordinary and more important discovery has hardly ever been made, for it contained the foundation of nearly all scientific discoveries which have been made since. This discovery proclaimed that an application of the forces still at work to-day on the earth's surface, but continued throughout long ages, will furnish the interpretation of the history written in the rocks, and thus an explanation of the history of the earth itself. The slow elevation of the earth's crust, such as is still going on to-day, would, if continued, produce mountains; and the washing away of the land by rains and floods, such as we see all around us, would, if continued through the long centuries, produce the valleys and gorges which so astound us. The explanation of the past is to be found in the present. But this geological history told of a history of life as well as a history of rocks. The history of the rocks has indeed been bound up in the history of life, and no sooner did it appear that the earth's crust h