III. Other singular records of the age under review have been preserved in a similar manner; for the ocean itself has not failed to impress its own movements on the sands laved by its waters. Hence the RIPPLE-MARK has been detected, a recognized object of the science, and a phenomenon to be seen in the sandstones of all ages and in all countries. The new red, from the stiller waters perhaps in which it was formed, contains everywhere beautifully minute and perfect delineations of the kind. The _furrowed_ sandstones form a class by themselves, being selected in the neighborhood of Brighton, as paving-stones for the streets, and in the stable-yards as a protection for the horses against slipping. The traces often of the more destructive violence of the sea, even of recent date, in leveling villages, sweeping down plains, undermining cliffs, overwhelming proud navies, are completely obliterated or forgotten, while here the records of its still voice are indelibly engraven on the rock. Observe other markings as you walk along the sea-shore on a summer’s eve; how every wavelet that breaks upon the beach leaves its tiny indentation, until the whole surface becomes furrowed as the reflex of the ever-shifting flood; there spring up on every side innumerable hillocks of sand, little blisters through which you detect the movements of a creature within, and then the trail of the sea-worm is visible all over. These were _vermes_ and _annelides_ burrowing in the sands, in those ancient times, with instincts and habits precisely the same. “We find,” says Dr. Buckland, “on the surface of slabs, both of the calcareous grit, and Stonesfield slate, near Oxford, and on sandstones of the Wealden formation, in Sussex and Dorsetshire, perfectly-preserved and petrified castings of marine worms, at the upper extremity of holes bored by them in the sand, while it was yet soft at the bottom of the water; and within the sandstones, traces of tubular holes in which the worms resided.” Nature here has changed little from her first models; the same element, which is now chaffing upon the same materials of sand and rock, has possessed through all time the same ingredients of life-stirring action.