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At Cornwall’s Cheese Wring, eight rough granite blocks rise 32 feet, with the top block wider than those below. No mason built the stack: weathering eroded the softer rock around the granite, leaving the harder blocks balanced on one another. Nearby, logan (rocking) stones can rock with a push despite weighing many tons. The formations show how ordinary weathering over time can create shapes that look built by people.

The Giant’s Causeway is made of thousands of basalt columns, fitted so closely that they have been compared to vertebrae. Cooling basalt cracks into these shapes wherever conditions are right. The same kind of formation appears at Fingal’s Cave on Staffa, with similar columns in South America and India. Across distant places, the same natural process creates something that looks like masonry.

A historical account describes prairie flames at night as brilliant chains of liquid fire across the grass. Along the Missouri, Platte and Arkansas river bottoms, dry grass burned fast enough to overtake a rider on horseback. The account describes rivers, bare ground and already-burned ground as barriers. Its striking point is the speed of a fire moving through grass, driven by fuel and wind.

A falcon flown from Andalusia was found alive in Tenerife, roughly 752 miles away, about sixteen hours later. The account describes another long-distance flight: one of Henry II’s falcons escaped at Fontainebleau and was recaptured in Malta the very next morning. From that second flight, the book estimates a speed of about 75 miles an hour, sustained speed, not a brief burst. The two flights both point to the same striking figure, though the estimate comes from the second one.

Tiny coral animals build limestone skeletons, grain by grain. Generation after generation, a reef can grow until it reaches the surface. Given enough time, sand collects and plants take hold, creating dry land where there was only open sea. No architect or single builder is needed: repeated small contributions can make new ground.