Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

456 CONCLUSIONS.

Who shall say? Science will yet compare minutely the composition of these different conglomerates. No secret can escape discovery when the light of a world’s intelligence is brought to bear upon it.

And even here we stumble over a still more tremendous fact :

It has been supposed that the primeval granite was the molten crust of the original glowing ball of the earth, when it first hardened as it cooled.

But, lo! the microscope, (so Professor Winchell tells us,) reveals that this very granite, this foundation of all our rocks, this ancient globe-crust, is itself made up of sedimentary rocks, which were melted, fused, and run together in some awful conflagration which wiped out all life on the planet.

Beyond the granite, then, there were seas and shores, winds and rains, rivers and sediment carried into the waters to form the rocks melted up in this granite ; there were countless ages; possibly there were animals and man; but all melted and consumed together. Was this, too, the result of a comet visitation ?

Who shall tell the age of this old earth? Who shall count the ebbs and flows of eternity? Who shall say how often this planet has been developed up to the highest forms of life, and how often all this has been obliterated in universal fire ?

The earth is one great tomb of life :

“ All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom.”

In endless series the ages stretch along—hirth, life, development, destruction. And so shall it be till time is no more.