But no place has proved so favorable for fossil remains as the bed of the sea. The rapid deposit of sediment on the ocean floor and the remoteness from changes of heat and cold, have made the old ocean beds, such as we visited in our mountain of fossils, a wonderful storehouse of the life-forms of distant ages. The mollusks, corals, and crinoids furnish us the most varied and beautiful fossil remains, and in some cases the preservation is so perfect, that traces are retained of even the former colorings of the shells of mollusks and the scales of fishes that lived in the remotest times. The grand march of life has been an ascending series, and for our knowledge of this line of ascent we are indebted to fossils, which tell in successive strata of the earth the history, not only of the changes in the earth’s crust, but of the animal and vegetable life of different periods. No doubt only a very, very few of the fossils that are hidden in the treasure-houses of earth and sea, have ever been found. There are millions of strange and beautiful things that have never met mortal eye. Let us sleep and dream. Let us dream that we have built a great and splendid museum, and lined it with shelves and cases. Let us dream that we have found a ring that once belonged to King Solomon, which gives us power over all gnomes and genii. Let us dream that we open wide all the doors and windows of our museum and stand in the midst and clap our hands, and command the genii and gnomes to bring us the treasures hidden in rock, sand, and sea, in lake and river and peat moss and earth beds. They come! They come! They fly through the air, gnomes, pixies, afrites, fairies, genii, and they fill every shelf and case of our museum with fossil forms and pictured rocks and sands, and give us examples of every animal and vegetable that lived so long ago. How rich and happy now are we! We wake: our dream has fled: the airy walls and shelves and cases of our museum are gone: the gnomes and their brethren, the treasures untold, are vanished with our sleep. What have we left? Nothing? Yes, the best that we can have; industry and observation--these are better than the magic ring and seal of Solomon. FOOTNOTES: [29] Bac-tee-re-a. These are really unicellular plants. LESSON XIV. FOOTPRINTS IN THE SAND. “So where some trivial creature played of old The warm soft clay received the tiny dint; We cleave the rock’s deep bosom, and behold Deep in its core, the immemorial print. Men marvel such frail record should outline The vanished forests and the trees o’erhurled.” A teacher and his class sat one day upon some tree-trunks which had fallen across a bed of bare, slightly-sloping rocks. The teacher, with his head between his hands, looked steadfastly down. “What are you thinking of?” demanded a pupil. “I am reading,” said the teacher. “And what do you read? Is the rock your book?”