Hot springs, earthquakes, burning mountains, all tell the same tale: somewhere beneath the earth's surface there is a quantity of heated material, and these "convulsions of nature" which are so terrible in their effects come from the efforts made by it to escape from its prison. A friend who had been in a South American city during an earthquake told me of the terror-stricken feeling which he experienced when he ran out of the house in alarm, only to see buildings reeling and falling, and to feel the solid earth itself rocking beneath his feet, while from beneath came a rumbling noise, and a sound as of the clanking of chains. This trembling and rocking of the earth has led savage nations to speak of some monster underground turning his huge body. Shocks of earthquakes are occasionally felt in England, and in the north-west of Ireland sheets of lava show that volcanoes were once nearer home than we think. The Giants' Causeway, in the north of Ireland, and Fingal's Cave, in the Island of Staffa, off the north-west coast of Scotland, have been made by this lava having cooled and split up into beautifully formed columns, which look like stone pillars. "BEAUTIFUL THINGS. "What millions of beautiful things there must be In this mighty world!--who could reckon them all! The tossing, the foaming, the wide flowing sea, And thousands of rivers that into it fall. "Oh, there are the mountains, half covered with snow, With tall and dark trees, like a girdle of green, And waters that wind in the valleys below, Or roar in the caverns too deep to be seen. "Vast caves in the earth, full of wonderful things, The bones of strange animals, jewels and spars; Or far up in Iceland, the hot boiling springs, Like fountains of feathers or showers of stars! "Here spread the sweet meadows, with thousands of flowers; Far away are old woods, that for ages remain; Wild elephants sleep in the shade of their bowers, Or troops of young antelopes traverse the plain. "Oh yes, they are glorious, all to behold, And pleasant to read of, and curious to know; And something of God in His wisdom we're told Whatever we look at--wherever we go!" ANNE TAYLOR. THE THIRD DAY. THE GREEN EARTH. "_The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof._"--PSALM xxiv. 1. "_Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it:... Thou preparest them corn, when Thou hast so provided for it._"--PSALM lxv. 9. "_Every tree is known by his own fruit._"--LUKE vi. 44. I want you to read carefully verses 11, 12, 13, and then 29 and 30, of our chapter in Genesis; for in them God has told us of His work upon the THIRD DAY of Creation, when at His word the earth--no longer waste and bare, as when it came up from beneath the waters--was clothed in garments of beauty; "dressed in living green," as the hymn says.