Series of
beds twice as thick, forming a grand geological library - a collection
of stone books covering thousands of miles of shelving, tier on tier,
conveniently arranged for the student. And with what wonderful
scriptures are their pages filled - myriad forms of successive floras
and faunas, lavishly illustrated with colored drawings, carrying us
back into the midst of the life of a past infinitely remote. And as
we go on and on, studying this old, old life in the light of the life
beating warmly about us, we enrich and lengthen our own.
THE END
Footnotes [by the editor of the 1918 original of this text]:
[1] This essay was written early in 1875.
[2] The wild sheep of California are now classified as Ovis nelsoni.
Whether those of the Shasta region belonged to the latter species, or
to the bighorn species of Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, is still an
unsettled question.
[3] An excerpt from a letter to a friend, written in 1873.
[4] Muir at this time was making Yosemite Valley his home.
[5] An obsolete genus of plants now replaced in the main by
Chrysothamnus and Ericameria.
[6] An early local name for what is now known as Lassen Peak, or Mt.
Lassen. In 1914 its volcanic activity was resumed with spectacular
eruptions of ashes, steam, and gas.
