I could go on for hours about this starting out of Nancy and Frank, but
many civic affairs await us; for Julius Gadsby who has not got into
this story up to now, had, from his constant poring through all kinds
of books of information, built up a thorough insight into fossils;
and you know that Kathlyn is way up in Biology; which brings in our
awkward "bugs" again. Now bugs will burrow in soil, and always did,
from History's birth; building catacombs which at last vanish through a
piling up of rocks, sand or soil on that spot. Now Julius continually
ran across accounts of important "finds" of such fossils, and with
Kathlyn's aid was soon inaugurating popular clamor for a big Hall of
Natural History.
This, Julius and Kathlyn thought, would turn out as popular, in a way,
as living animals out at our Zoo. But an appropriation for a Hall
of Natural History is a hard thing to jam through a City Council;
for though its occupants call for no food, you can't maintain such
a building without human custody; "which," said Old Bill Simpkins,
"is but a tricky way of saying CASH!!" But our Council was by now so
familiar with calls from that famous "Organization", and, owing to
its inborn faith in that grand body of hustling Youth, such a building
was built; Julius and Kathlyn arranging all displays of fossil birds,
plants, "bugs," footprints, raindrop marks, worms, skulls, parts of
jaws, and so on. And what a crowd was on hand for that first public
day! Julius and Kathlyn took visitors through various rooms, giving
much data upon what was shown; and many a Branton Hills inhabitant
found out a lot of facts about our vast past; about organisms living
so far back in oblivion as to balk Man's brain to grasp. Kathlyn stood
amongst groups of botanical fossilizations, with Gadsby not far away,
as this studious young woman told school pupils how our common plants
of today through various transitions in form, show a kinship with
what now lay, in miraculously good condition, in this big Hall; and
Julius told staring groups how this or that fossil did actually link
such animals as our cow or walrus of today with original forms totally
apart, both in looks and habits. And it was comforting to Gadsby to
find pupils asking how long ago this was, and noting that amazing look
as Julius had to say that nobody knows.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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