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mind as we attempt to think of a time when this world of ours was 
a busy world without ourselves! It seems almost impossible to 
picture out a globe covered with a magnificent vegetation, and in- 
habited by myriads of creatures—and man, absent. In one of 
those odd mixtures of science and fiction with which the name of 
Jules Verne is associated, the author gives an account of an ideal 
journey into the interior of the earth. The scientific traveller 
comes into regions are the huge saurians of the Mesozoic Period 
still battle in primeval seas, and to others where the Megatherium 
and the Mastodon are browsing on more recent vegetation. But 
he seems bound to introduce a human companion to them :— , 
“ At a distance of a quarter of a mile, leaning against the trunk 
of a gigantic kauri, stood a human being, the Proteus of those 
subterranean regions, a new son of Neptune, watching this countless 
herd of mastodons, and huger still himself, * * * a giant, 
able to control those monsters. In stature he was at least twelve 
feet high. His head, huge and unshapely as a baffalo’s, was half 
hidden in the thick and tangled growth of his unkempt hair. It 
most resembled the mane of the primitive elephant. In his hand 
he wielded with ease an enormous bough, a staff worthy of this 
shepherd of the geologic period.” 
For we have been for ages so much in the habit of thinking that 
all creation exists for man, and man only ; we have so got into the 
habit of pronouncing a thing useless if it serves no good purpose for 
ourselves, that we almost refuse to entertain an idea of generations 
of animals and plants that had nothing whatever to do with our 
race, but lived apparently only for themselves. 
Yet so it was for countless ages, through all those wondrous 
changes of land and sea which have taken place since. 
“The solid earth whereon we tread 
In tracts of fluent heat began.” 
““O earth what changes hast thou seen ; 
There. where the long street roars, hath been 
The stillness of the central sea. 
The hills are shadows, and they flow 
From form to form, and nothing stands ; 
They melt like mist, the solid lands, 
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.” 
But through it all it was a busy earth, full of life. The records of 
the past are too evident and too simple to be misunderstood. 
Nature does not write in hieroglyphs the history of a prehistoric 
world, the characters may be read of all. written in the rocks 
themselves. 
And certainly, among all the relics glittering at our feet as we 
ramble across the sea-forsaken bay, none so readily attract our 
notice as the curious Ammonites, Horn-stones, or Snake-stones. 
