Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

teen 03. Ome. een,

WHAT IS A COMET? 3

“Tt is a finely levigated silico-aluminous earthformed by the disintegration of feldspathic or granite rocks.” *

The particles ground out of feldspar are finer than those derived from mica and hornblende, and we can readily understand how the great forces of gravity, acting upon the dust of the comet’s tail, might separate one from the other ; or how magnetic waves passing through the comet might arrange all the particles containing iron by themselves, and thus produce that marvelous separation of the constituents of the granite which we have found to exist in the Drift clays. If the destroyed world possessed no sedimentary rocks, then the entire material of the comet would consist of granitic stones and dust such as constitutes clays.

The stones are reduced to a small-size by the constant attrition :

“The stones of the ‘till’ are not of the largest ; indeed,

bowlders above four feet in diameter are comparatively seldom met with in the till.” ¢

And this theory is corroborated by the fact that the eminent German geologist, Dr. Hahn, has recently discovered an entire series of organic remains in meteoric stones, of the class called chrondites, and which he identifies as belonging to classes of sponges, corals, and crinoids. Dr. Weinland, another distinguished German, corroborates these discoveries; and he has also found fragments in these stones very much like the youngest marine chalk in the Gulf of Mexico; and he thinks he sees, under the microscope, traces of vegetable growth. Francis Birgham says :

* “ American Cyclopadia,” article “ Clay,” + “The Great Ice Age,” p, 10,