22 SYLVAN SECBETS. 



which my gin-house stood. Why should a 

 heron ever die of old age? He has no grief, 

 no sorrow, no nagging conscience, no indiges- 

 tion, no tendency towards drunkenness or 

 other vice. Look at that big ash -blue fellow 

 yonder, as he stands beside that wisp of tall 

 marsh-grass, and tell me when and where he 

 was hatched ; may it not have been ten thou- 

 sand years ago? Perhaps it was he who shed 

 the feather, the fine impression of which now 

 rests somewhere in the lowest stratum of the 

 quaternary ! Brave old fellow ! he lived before 

 the western mountains were lifted out of the 

 sea, and while yet the upper cretaceous rocks 

 were sediment held in suspension. He was 

 too wary to leave his bones beside those of 

 Hesperornis and Ichthyoryiisl With his 

 jewel-like eyes he has seen every step of 

 man's development. 



But the mocking-bird yonder, how old is 

 he? How has he survived the great upheav- 

 als and the great down-sinkings — the floods 

 and the ebbs? It is not known; but he in 

 here, nevertheless, as young and fresh and 

 free as he was when Adam drew the first 

 breath of a living soul. What migrations and 

 re-migrations he has had to make to keep on 

 land and to follow the shiftings of climate- 

 centres, during all these geologic oscillations ! 

 The time was, perhaps, when he sang in fruit- 

 fragrant groves around the North pole; for 

 that was a warm and luxuriant spot once, as 

 is shown by the vegetable fossils of the later 

 rocks. All the way from the gulf-coast north- 

 ward to where the paleozoic deposits dip un- 

 der the eternal ice and snow of the boreal re- 

 gion are found traces of a flora which grew 

 under tropical and, perhaps, even torrid con- 

 ditions of climate. The age of riant vegeta- 



