That many-sided genius of the 15th and 16th centuries, Leonardo da Vinci was rightly regarded by Dmitri Merejkowski as “The Forerunner,” in his historical story of that name. Leonardo was most precise in his remarkable deductions on fossilization, which, he wrote, occurred from the accumulation of mud in the cavities of shells discovered in rivers which were at an ancient period beneath the sea near the coast. Nature’s wonderful workings are exhibited in the metamorphoses of the various stones. This process is noticed in the silification of wood, shells, coral, etc. It is observed in the incrustation of one substance on another, the expulsion of one mineral matter by some chemical agency, by the gradual yielding of original substance to new and foreign invaders and by the occurrence of one mineral in the form of another, etc. So far as is considered necessary this subject has been already dealt with. And so Nature is continually proving to man that all is change and that dissolution is impossible. Continually, lower forms are giving place to higher, and the work of the world goes on with the persistent regularity of a huge machine. “Nothing is lost,” says chemistry, and even the voice of man, the cries of animals, sounds of breaking rocks, the restless sea, the moaning of the winds amongst the trees, etc., can now be easily impressed on the modern phonograph plates which provide a material working body. Every action can be recorded and reproduced by the photographic camera; even the air can be harnessed to convey a desire. Everything in the Universe, from the stars of Heaven to the atom, or to the minutest subdivision of the atom, is mathematical, law abiding, and under the mysterious and controlling Force which we reverence as God the Infinite. Nature claims her own, the material goes to the material, “dust to dust,” and earth processes turn the visible parts of animals and plants, etc., into its identical crystal form. And the controlling powers about which these perceptible forms materialize, seek the realms of finer forces to which they truly belong. Rightly say the venerable philosophers whose inspired utterances have taught us so much, “The Spirit strips itself to go up and clothes itself to go down.” The writer has tried to make this palpable truth clear in these pages, and trusts that the links in the ancient chain are now left in a little better repair than they were, and that the power within the stone will be better appreciated and better understood. The order of the Infinite Universe is exact and sincere. From its inception the work, trials and struggles of the smallest atom are determined and Mind is compelled to express itself. The exact point of union between the visible and the invisible forces has been long known to the hermetic scientists and philosophers whose thoughts are echoed by Wilks, the English poet of Geology, in the following lines: