eing cut out by the sea. Once they spread all over where
we stand now, and away behind us beyond Newbury in Berkshire, and away in
front of us, all over where London now stands.

How can you tell that?

Because there are little caps--little patches--of them left on the tops
of many hills to the north of London; just remnants which the sea, and
the Thames, and the rain have not eaten down. Probably they once
stretched right out to sea, sloping slowly under the waves, where the
mouth of the Thames is now. You know the sand-cliffs at Bournemouth?

Of course.

Then those are of the same age as the Bagshot sands, and lie on the
London clay, and slope down off the New Forest into the sea, which eats
them up, as you know, year by year and day by day. And here were once
perhaps cliffs just like them, where London Bridge now stands.

* * * * *

There, we are rumbling away home at last, over the dear old
heather-moors. How far we have travelled--in our fancy at least--since
we began to talk about all these things, upon the foggy November day, and
first saw Madam How digging at the sand-banks with her water-spade. How
many countries we have talked of; and what wonderful questions we have
got answered, which all grew out of the first question, How were the
heather-moors made? And yet we have not talked about a hundredth part of
the things about which these very heather-moors ought to set us thinking.
But so it is, child. Those who wish honestly to learn the laws of Madam
How, which we call Nature, by looking honestly at what she does, which we
call Fact, have only to begin by looking at the very smallest thing,
pin's head or pebble, at their feet, and it may lead them--whither, they
cannot tell. To answer any one question, you find you must answer
another; and to answer that you must answer a third, and then a fourth;
and so on for ever and ever.

For ever and ever?

Of course. If we thought and searched over the Universe--ay, I believe,
only over this one little planet called earth--for millions on millions
of years, we should not get to the end of our searching. The more we
learnt, the more we should find there was left to learn. All things, we
should find, are constituted according to a Divine and Wonderful Order,
which links each thing to every other thing; so that we cannot fully
comprehend any one thing without comprehending all things: and who can do
that, save He who made all things? Therefore our true