THE NAUTILUS. 



All this took place when the ocean rolled over what is now the 

 State of Ohio ; before there was any coal, long before there were 

 any Appalachian Mountains, and so long before the creation of 

 Adam, that the time since the first man seems but a little while in 

 comparison. 



Century after century went slowly by, the land gradually rose, 

 and the ocean slunk away. 



Then came a time when uncouth monsters ranged over the soil ; 

 then a period of ice and desolation ; then the age of man. But through 

 all these uncounted millions of years, one little shell was quietly 

 waiting waiting a thousand thousand years, until the blast of the 

 convict gang threw it up to the surface, and the sun shone down 

 upon it, and a human U-inir rejoiced to find it there. Could itspeak, 

 how it would inquire what had become of the ocean. Simple little 

 shell, you have had a long sleep, but the world has been awake and 

 astir all the time. 



Perhaps this paper seems little like a conchological report, but, 

 during the past year, most of mv work with shells has been, not with 

 modern species, but with fossils. I have been arranging a geologi- 

 cal cabinet, and have been putting into their places molluscan 

 species, from the little Lingula cnneata of the Lower Silurian rocks, 

 down to those species which are now living along the coast. 



How important it is for any one who desires to understand the 

 noble science of geology, to first learn as much as possible of its 

 handmaid, coucbolotry. The shells of mollusks are the most endur- 



OJ 



ing of fossils. They are the seals impressed upon the stony docu- 

 ments of the distant past, by which the scholar can tell you, often 

 in a moment, the age in which those documents were written, and 

 what of value you will be likely to find therein. 



It may not be scientific, but I love to imagine that the mollnsks 

 which secreted these shells are alive once more. I question them 

 concerning the past, concerning their contemporaries and their sur- 

 roundings. I open the Devonian drawer of fossils and ask those 

 revived mollusks to tell me concerning the "Age of Fishes." The 

 little Pupa vettista of the Carboniferous Age tells me a story of its 

 life in the " dim watery woodlands" of the Coal Period. 



Ammonite and Hippurite discourse concerning the"Age of Chalk;" 

 the giant Ostrea details the quiet story of Tertiary times, and, 

 finally, a little Olivella, such as now sports in the sands of the beach, 

 tells me how it came to be buried in a little hill that has evidently 

 been raised from the ocean in comparatively recent times. 



