Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and Gravel. Ignatius Donnelly

       Ignatius Donnelly

      Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and Gravel

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664649140

      Table of Contents

       Cover

       Titlepage

       Text

      LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE DRIFT	Frontispiece.
TILL OVERLAID WITH BOWLDER-CLAY	5
SCRATCHED STONE, FROM THE TILL	6
RIVER ISSUING FROM A SWISS GLACIER	19
TERMINAL MORAINE	20
GLACIER-FURROWS AND SCRATCHES AT STONY POINT, LAKE ERIE	26
DRIFT-DEPOSITS IN THE TROPICS	38
STRATIFIED BEDS IN TILL, LEITHEN WATER, PEEBLESSHIRE, SCOTLAND	54
SECTION AT JOINVILLE	54
ORBITS OF THE PERIODIC COMETS	83
ORBIT OF EARTH AND COMET	88
THE EARTH'S ORBIT	89
THE COMET SWEEPING PAST THE EARTH	92
THE SIDE OF THE EARTH STRUCK BY THE COMET	93
THE SIDE NOT STRUCK BY THE COMET	93
THE GREAT COMET OF 1811	95
CRAG AND TAIL	98
SOLAR SPECTRUM	105
SECTION AT ST. ACHEUL	122
THE ENGIS SKULL	124
THE NEANDERTHAL SKULL	125
PLUMMET FROM SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY, CALIFORNIA	180
{p. v}
COMET OF 1862	137
COURSE OF DONATI'S COMET	157
THE PRIMEVAL STORM	220
THE AFRITE IN THE PILLAR	270
DAHISH OVERTAKEN BY DIMIRIAT	272
EARTHEN VASE, FOUND IN THE CAVE OF FURFOOZ, BELGIUM	347
PRE-GLACIAL MAN'S PICTURE OF THE MAMMOTH	349
PRE-GLACIAL MAN'S PICTURE OF REINDEER	350
PRE-GLACIAL MAN'S PICTURE OF THE HORSE	351
SPECIMEN OF PRE-GLACIAL CARVING	352
STONE IMAGE FOUND IN OHIO	353
COPPER COIN, FOUND ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN FEET UNDER GROUND, IN ILLINOIS {front}	356
COPPER COIN, FOUND ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN FEET UNDER GROUND, IN ILLINOIS {back}	356
BIELA'S COMET, SPLIT IN TWO	409
SECTION ON THE SCHUYLKILL	432

      {p. 1}

      RAGNAROK:

      THE AGE OF FIRE AND GRAVEL.

      PART I.

      The Drift

      CHAPTER I.

      THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DRIFT.

      READER,--Let us reason together:--

      What do we dwell on? The earth. What part of the earth? The latest formations, of course. We live upon the top of a mighty series of stratified rocks, laid down in the water of ancient seas and lakes, during incalculable ages, said, by geologists, to be from ten to twenty miles in thickness.

      Think of that! Rock piled over rock, from the primeval granite upward, to a height four times greater than our highest mountains, and every rock stratified like the leaves of a book; and every leaf containing the records of an intensely interesting history, illustrated with engravings, in the shape of fossils, of all forms of life, from the primordial cell up to the bones of man and his implements.

      But it is not with the pages of this sublime volume

      {p. 2}

      we have to deal in this book. It is with a vastly different but equally wonderful formation.

      Upon the top of the last of this series of stratified rocks we find THE DRIFT.

      What is it?

      Go out with me where yonder men are digging a well. Let us observe the material they are casting out.

      First they penetrate through a few inches or a foot or two of surface soil; then they enter a vast deposit of sand, gravel, and clay. It may be fifty, one hundred, five hundred, eight hundred feet, before they reach the stratified rocks on which this drift rests. It covers whole continents. It is our earth. It makes the basis of our soils; our railroads cut their way through it; our carriages drive over it; our cities are built upon it; our crops are derived from it; the water we drink percolates through it; on it we live, love, marry, raise children, think, dream, and die; and in the bosom of it we will be buried.

      Where