89 



against rocks and pebbles, was covered up by the ever thickening 

 deposit on the bed or on the shore of that ancient ocean. And 

 tracing back the possible history of these atoms, — they may 

 only have reached the Oolitic seas after a long transit by river 

 and streamlet from a former resting place in some Silurian rock 

 which ages before had been upheaved from the bed of an old 

 Silurian ocean, and now was undergoing slow disintegration. 

 From the waters of that ancient Silurian ocean these atoms of 

 Calcium may have been secreted by a Zoophyte, and have been 

 built up into one of those many beautiful corals which there 

 abounded. N"or would the history of these atoms stop here, for 

 probably long ere they assumed a solid form they have circled 

 the globe in a gaseous state. Of any of the solid matter of the 

 globe can it be said — " See, this is new. It hath been already 

 of old time, which was before us." 



If a slight digression is permissible, this subject may suggest 

 some reflections on the acquisition of scientific knowledge. 

 Physiology teaches that the human body is but an agglomera- 

 tion of atoms, which are ever changing — atoms which, like those 

 of which Tufa is composed, have played their part in many a 

 character and in various scenes before they reached their present 

 position. And is it not thus with scientific truth, with those 

 items of information, with those conclusions which together 

 make up the sum of the store of scientific knowledge ? In how 

 many a brain have these atoms of knowledge found a previous 

 lodgment ? In reading the records of early Geologic students 

 how striking is it to observe how much those old ''Fellows" 

 knew, and how well they knew it. And so with Antiquarian 

 lore, how much old Pennant and others knew of matters which 

 are now sometimes brought forward as new. But as in the old 

 geologic strata, which consist of atoms, all, it may be, equally 

 ^Id, there occur ever and anon new creations of organic life, in 

 which are traced that onward and upward progress from lowly 

 types of existence to those of higher forms, so to the stock of 

 ascertained scientific truth are there from time to time added 

 those new discoveries which reward the diligent searcher after 

 truth, and which form waymarks to the onward and upward 

 path of knowledge. 



