EARTH’S CHANGING SURFACE
Violent changes in the earth’s surface arc (produced in a. few moments by suleili earthquakes as last week’s catastrophe. At the opposite end of the scale is the gradual erosion 'by water, of which the most striking example is the Grand Canyon. “I aani convinced that thetre is no spectacle to be put in quite the same rank with it for awe-inspiring quality,” Dr. Rufus M. Jones wrote of it recently in the Friend. “One would expect mountains to be more inspiring than chasms. Height seems lilkely to he more moving than depth. And yet the fact remains that this strange erosion througlh the crust of the earth makes a profounder impression ,on the beholder than does any Imountain of any height. All this carving has been done by the slow process of eirosion, going on so gradually than a thousand years makes almost no difference. By this infinitesimal nibbling away of the rock the waters have cut down more than a mile through all the strata of the earth that represent the etas of life on the planet and have made a pathway 13 miles wide and 200 miles long across this tableland. When one says ‘millions of years,’ it carries no meaning. It rolls off the mind without leaving a groove behind; but as one gazes down at that narrow ribbon of water plunging along in its channel and reflects that that soft fluid, with no hamlmers and no blasting material,
lias inch by inch sculptured out this pathway for itself, the very time-elerne lit takes on a grandeur of its own and adds immensely to the mysterum ti’elmendum of the total effect.”
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Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 3962, 29 June 1929, Page 1
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278EARTH’S CHANGING SURFACE Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 3962, 29 June 1929, Page 1
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