266 Robert Harkness, Esq., on Fossil Footprints. 



with its ruthless hand, has destroyed the monuments which 

 man erects, to hand down to posterity the records of great- 

 ness ; it has swept from the face of the earth all traces of 

 the progress of mighty conquerors, and buried in oblivion 

 the havoc, the slaughter, and the plundering of the oppressor, 

 and yet it has left the evidence of the peaceful wanderings 

 of the tortoise, and the footprints of other reptiles, made 

 during a period long prior to what we term antiquity. 



" It is well to scan, 

 What's writ on this neglected stone." 



How easily the mind is led to revive in its chambers the 

 scenes which occurred when this red sandstone formed a por- 

 tion of the sand of the sea-shore. To recall the monotonous 

 waste overspread " by ribbed sea-sand," moved and driven 

 by every breeze, — to behold the distant sea, with its wander- 

 ing waves dancing in the summer's sun, — to see this luminary 

 dipping behind the western waters, and filling the face of 

 nature with the blush of loveliness, becoming gradually more 

 indistinct, as night draws her dark veil over the restless sea ; 

 then to perceive the crescent moon silvering the ripples of 

 the coming tide, and hear the distant moan which foretells 

 the brewing storm, and the mourning of the wind in the cham- 

 bers of the withered shells ; and again, to look forward on 

 the western sky and see the dark clouds lower, driven by the 

 storm towards the shore, and transiently dimpling the ocean's 

 cheek with rain-drops until it reaches the sand, where the 

 passing shower leaves more durable impress in the form of 

 the pitting of fossil rain-marks. The laws of nature are 

 beautiful and sublime, telling of the goodness as well as the 

 greatness of the Creator. 



