of broken stones whence the voices had come; and there, truly, on every block and every fragment the fossils met our eye, sometimes so thickly grouped together that we could barely see the stone on which they lay. 4. I bent over the mound, and the first fragment that turned up (my first-found fossil) was one that excited the deepest interest. Tom, the commander in chief, pronounced my treasure-trove to be unmistaka bly a fish. True, it seemed to lack head and tail and fins; the liveliest fancy amongst us hesitated as to which were the scales; and in after years I learned that it was really a vegetable, - the seed cone or catkin of a large extinct kind of club moss: but, in the mean time, Tom had declared it to be a fish, and a fish it must assuredly be. 5. Like other schoolboys I had, of course, had my lessons on geology. I could repeat a "Table of Formations," and remembered the pictures of some uncouth monsters on the pages of our text-books. 6. But the notion that these pictures were the representations of actual, though now extinct monsters; that the matter-of-fact details of our text-books really symbolized living truths, and were not invented solely to distract the brains of schoolboys; that beneath and beyond the present creation there lay around us the memorials of other creations not less glorious, and infinitely older; and thus that more, immensely more, than our books taught us could be learned by looking at nature for ourselves, all this was strange to me. It came now for the first time like a new revelation, one that has gladdened my life ever since. 7. We wrought on the rubbish heap most lustily, and found an untold sum of wonders. The human mind in its earlier stages dwells on resemblances, rather than on differences. We identified what we found in the stones with that to which it most nearly approached in existing nature. Hence, to our imagination, the plants, insects, shells, and fishes of our rambles met us again in the rock. There was little that some one of the party could not explain; and thus our limestone became a more extraordinary conglomeration of organic remains, than ever perturbed the brain of a geologist. 8. It did not occur at that time to any of us to inquire why a perch came to be embalmed among ivy and rose leaves; why a seashore whelk lay entwined in the arms of a butterfly; or why a beetle should seem to have been doing his utmost to dance a pirouette round the tooth of a fish. These questions came all to be asked afterwards, and then I saw how egregiously erroneous had been our identifications. But in the mean time, knowing little of the subject, I believed everything, and with implicit faith piled up dragon flies, ferns, fishes, beetle cases, seaweeds, and shells. 9. The sun, with a fiery glare, had sunk behind the distant hills. The chill of an evening late in autumn. fell over everything, save the spirits of the treasure seekers; and yet they too in the end succumbed. 10. The ring of the hammer became less frequent, and the shout that announced the discovery of each fresh marvel seldomer broke the stillness of the scene; and as the night wind swept across the fields, and rustled fitfully among the withered weeds of the quarry, it was wisely resolved that we should all go home. Then came the packing-up. Each had amassed a pile of specimens, well-nigh as large as himself. 11. Despite our loads, we left the quarry in high glee. Arranging ourselves into a concave phalanx, with the speaker in the center, we resumed a tale of thrilling interest, that had come to its most tragic part just as we arrived at the quarry several hours before. It lasted all the way back, beguiling the tedium, darkness, and chill of our four-mile journey; and the final consummation of the story was artfully reached just as we got to the door of the first of the party, who had to wish us good-night. 12. Such was my first geological excursion,-a simple event enough, and yet it was the turning point in my life. From that day onward, the rocks and their fossil treasures formed the chief subject of my everyday thoughts. I might have been a merchant, or a banker, or a lawyer, as others of the party have successively become; but that day stamped my fate, and I became a geologist. 13. And yet I had carried home with me a strange medley of errors and misconceptions. Nearly every fossil we found was incorrectly named. We believed ourselves to have discovered in the rock organisms which had really never been found fossil by man. So far, therefore, the whole lesson had to be unlearned. But (what was of infinitely more consequence to me than the correct names, or even the true nature, of the fossils) I had now seen fossils with my own eyes, and struck them out of the rock with my own hand. 14. The meaning of the lessons we had been taught at school began to glimmer upon me; the dry bones of our books were touched into life; the idea of creations anterior to man seemed clear; the fishes and plants of the lime quarry must have lived and died, but when and how? was it possible for me to discover? Yes, it was possible; and, after many an hour of puzzling thought and conjecture, I did discover what the fossils had to teach. It was a strange lesson when learned at last, very different from the first impressions obtained at the quarry. HEADS FOR COMPOSITION. I. BEGINNING OF THE EXCURSION: number of young geologists - their outfit arrival at the quarries. II. THE GEOLOGISTS AT WORK: "Where are the petrified forests and fishes?"—the discovery—young Geikie's first fossil-the fish" that was only a 66 catkin." III. THE UNTOLD SUM OF WONDERS: way the boys took to identify the fossils - examples of funny mistakes they madereturn of the young geologists, each with "a pile of specimens." IV. EFFECT ON GEIKIE: the excursion makes him a geologist -true, this first lesson had to be unlearned — but he had learned to observe. 60.- The Round of Life. glōam'ing (=glooming), twilight. | sēa' mew, the sea gull. 1. Two children, down by the shining strand, Gazing with joy on its snowy breast, Till the first star looks from the evening sky, 2. A soft green dell by the breezy shore, Hand clasped in hand while the tale of yore 3. A trim-built home on a sheltered bay; A wife looking out on the glistening sea; A prayer for the loved one far away, And prattling imps 'neath the old rooftree; A lifted latch, and a radiant face By the open door in the falling night; |