and trying to guess how they could have
been made by currents of water, and yet never could make any guess which
would do." But after that it was all explained to me; and I said,
"Honour to the man who has let Madam How teach him what she had been
trying to teach me for fifteen years, while I was too stupid to learn it.
Now I am certain, as certain as I can be of any earthly thing, that the
whole of these Windsor Forest Flats were ages ago ploughed and harrowed
over and over again, by ice-floes and icebergs drifting and stranding in
a shallow sea."

And if you say, my dear child, as some people will say, that it is like
building a large house upon a single brick to be sure that there was an
iceberg sea here, just because I see a few curlicues in the gravel and
sand--then I must tell you that there are sometimes--not often, but
sometimes--pages in Madam How's book in which one single letter tells you
as much as a whole chapter; in which if you find one little fact, and
know what it really means, it makes you certain that a thousand other
great facts have happened. You may be astonished: but you cannot deny
your own eyes, and your own common sense. You feel like Robinson Crusoe
when, walking along the shore of his desert island, he saw for the first
time the print of a man's foot in the sand. How it could have got there
without a miracle he could not dream. But there it was. One footprint
was as good as the footprints of a whole army would have been. A man had
been there; and more men might come. And in fear of the savages--and if
you have read Robinson Crusoe you know how just his fears were--he went
home trembling and loaded his muskets, and barricaded his cave, and
passed sleepless nights watching for the savages who might come, and who
came after all.

And so there are certain footprints in geology which there is no
mistaking; and the prints of the ice-plough are among them.

For instance:--When they were trenching the new plantation close to
Wellington College station, the men turned up out of the ground a great
many Sarsden stones; that is, pieces of hard sugary sand, such as
Stonehenge is made of. And when I saw these I said, "I suspect these
were brought here by icebergs:" but I was not sure, and waited. As the
men dug on, they dug up a great many large flints, with bottle-green
coats. "Now," I said, "I am sure. For I know where these flints must
have come from." And for reasons which would be too