Excerpt from Geology
The main features of the dry land on which we live seem to remain unchanged from year to year. The valleys and plains familiar to our forefathers are still familiar to us, bearing the same meadows and woodlands, the same hamlets and villages, though generation after generation of men has meanwhile passed away. The hills and mountains now rise along the sky-line as they did long centuries ago, catching as of old the fresh rains of heaven and gathering them into the brooks and rivers which, through unknown ages, have never ceased to flow seawards. So steadfast do these features appear to stand, and so strong a contrast do they offer to the shortness and changeableness of human life, that they have become typical in our minds of all that is ancient and durable. We speak of the firm earth, of the everlasting hills, of the imperishable mountains, as if, where all else is fleeting and mutable, these forms at least remain unchanged.
And yet attentive observation of what takes place from day to day around us shows that the surface of a country is not now exactly as it used to be. We notice various changes of its topography going on now, which have doubtless been in progress for a long time, and the accumulated effect of which may ultimately transform altogether the character of a landscape. A strong gale, for instance, will level thousands of trees in its pathway, turning a tract of forest or woodland into a bare space, which may become a quaking morass, until perhaps changed into arable ground by the farmer.
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