There it lay for ages, till the earth gave a great, long heave, that raised the rest of Wisconsin out of the ocean, and the mud around our Favosites' house packed and dried into hard rock and closed it in; and so it became part of the dry land. There it lay, imbedded in the rock for centuries and centuries. Then, the time of the first fishes came, and the other animals looked on them in awe and wonder as the Indians eyed Columbus. They were like the gar-pike in our Western rivers, only much larger,--as big as a stove-pipe,--and with a crust as hard as a turtle's shell. Then there came sharks, of strange forms, savage and ferocious, with teeth like bowie-knives. But the time of the old fishes came and went, and many more times came and went, but still Favosites lay in the ground. Then came the long, hot, wet summer, when the mists hung over the earth so thick that you might almost have cut them into chunks with a knife, like a loaf of gingerbread; and great ferns and rushes, big as an oak and tall as a steeple, grew over the land. Huge reptiles with jaws like a front door, and teeth like cross-cut saws, and little reptiles with wings like bats, crawled and swam and flew. But the ferns died, and the reptiles died, and the rush-trees fell into the swamps, and the Mississippi, now become quite a river, covered them up, and they were packed away under great layers of clay and sand, till at last they were turned into coal, and wept bitter tears of petroleum. But all the while Favosites lay in the rock at Oconto. Then the mists cleared up and the sun shone and the grass began to grow, and strange animals began to come and feed upon it. They were funny little zebra horses, no bigger than a Newfoundland dog, and great hairy elephants, and hogs with noses so long they could sit on their hind legs and root, and lots of still stranger creatures that no man ever saw alive. But still Favosites lay in the ground. So the long, long summer passed by, and the autumn, and the Indian summer; and at last the great winter came, and it snowed and snowed, and it was so cold that the snow wasn't off by the Fourth of July; and then it snowed and snowed till the snow never went off at all; and then it got so cold that it snowed all the time, till the snow covered all the animals, and then the trees, and then the mountains. Then it would thaw a little, and streams of water would run over the snow; then it would freeze again, and pack it into solid ice. Still it went on, snowing and thawing and freezing till the ice was a mile deep over Wisconsin, and the whole United States was one great skating rink.