I recall a notable instance of this: That grand man, President Hitchcock, long since gone to rest, one of the greatest and most eminent scientists of his State, discovered tracks in the valley of the Connecticut River. He had to classify some sixty different classes of tracks, which are found in the valley of the Connecticut sandstone ledges, which, when it was soft, was admirably calculated to receive impressions. His attention was called to them, and he made them out to be bird tracks. The European naturalists were very reluctant to believe it. They did not believe that any such discovery could be made by any American. They sent over a man to see the alleged bird tracks, and he went all over the museum, and he went down to the quarry and saw all the specimens, and went away and came back again. President Hitchcock asked him about it, and he said that he did not think there were any bird tracks there. After dinner he took him out to the porch. A few days before he had found a flat stone, on which mud had been deposited, and a snipe had walked over it; the mud dried, and he thought it was an exact parallel with his bird tracks. So he put it on his porch. The gentleman said, “What have you got here?” There they were, the tracks of a bird, and a wader. He said nothing. He went away, and said they were bird tracks. He wrote afterward that he had for the first time to study how a wading bird walked on both sides of a median line. And so when he studied the habits of a bird, he saw that these fossils were bird tracks. I speak of this because it is a key.
I allude again to that sermon of Bishop Simpson’s, where Job asks these questions, and the Lord tells him to find out that right next to him. Why don’t you study that, and interpret it in that manner so sensible? You find everywhere we are doing that. On that account people can not get a knowledge of geology, because geology asks you to commence right at the door. Stoop and pick up the pebble there; learn the soil, and teach yourselves and your children what it was. This is a progressive world where we have all got to begin. It seems wonderful that we have not done that before. If you will try it, if you will get the first weed by your door, and teach your children about it, and go out further and study geology and all the other ologies in that way, life will be lifted on the highest plane for all. [Applause.] Everybody that has tried that has found an exceeding great reward.