The Book of Nature

When you and I are together you often ask me question about many things and I try to answer them. Now that you are at Mussorie and I am in Allahabad we cannot have these talks. I am therefore going to write to you from time to time short accounts of the story of our earth and the many countries, great and small, into which is is divided. You have read a little about English history and Indian history. But England is only a little island ad India, though a big country, is only a small part of the earth's surface. If we went to know something about the story of this world of ours we must think of all the countries and all the peoples that have in-habited it, and not merely of one little country where we may have been born.

Every little stone that you see lying in the road or on the mountain side may be little page in nature's book and may be able to read any language. Hindi or Urdu or English, you have to learn its alphabet. So also you must learn the alphabet or nature before you can read her story in her books of stone and rock. Even now perhaps you know a little how to read this. If you see a little round shiny pebble does it not tell you something ? How did it get round and smooth and shiny without any corners and rough edges ? If you break a big rock into small bits, each is rough and has corners rough edges. It is not at all like a round smooth pebble. How then did the pebble become so round and smooth and shiny ? It will tell you its story if you have good eyes to see and ears to hear it. It tells you that once a time, it may be long also, it was a bit of a rock, just like the bit you may break from a big rock and stone with plenty of edges and corners, Probably it rested on some mountain stream which pushed it on and on till it reached a little river. And the little river took it to the big river. And al the while it rolled at the bottom of the river and its edges were worn away and rough surface made smooth and shiny. So it become the pebble that you see.