SKETCH OF 
THE FLOEIDA EEEFS AND KEYS. 
REPRINTED FROM THE "METHODS OF STUDY." 
The physical as well as the human history of the world has its mythical 
age, lying dim and vague in the morning mists of creation, like that of the 
heroes and demigods in the early traditions of man, defying all our ordinary 
dates and measures. But if the succession of periods that prepared the 
earth for the coming of man, and the animals and plants that accompany 
him on earth, baffles our finite attempts to estimate its duration, have we 
any means of determining even approximately the length of the period to 
which we ourselves belong ? If so, it may furnish us with some data for 
the further solution of these wonderful mysteries of time, and it is besides 
of especial importance with reference to the question of permanence of 
species. 
Those who maintain the mutability of species, and account for all the 
variety of life on earth by the gradual changes wrought by time and cir- 
cumstances, do not accept historical evidence as aftecting the question at all. 
The relics of those oldest nations, all whose history is preserved in monu- 
mental records, do not indicate the slightest variation of organic types from 
the earliest epoch to this day. The animals preserved within their tombs 
or carved upon the walls of their monuments by the ancient Egyptians 
were the same as those that have their home in the valley of the Nile 
to-day ; the negro, whose peculiar features are unmistakable even in their 
rude artistic attempts to represent them, was the same woolly-haired, thick- 
lipped, flat-nosed, dark-skinned being in the da3's of the Rameses that he 
is now. The apis, the ibis, the crocodiles, the sacred beetles, have brought 
down to us unchanged all the characters that superstition hallowed in those 
