196 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 



THE STORY OF A STONE. 



ONCE on a time, a great many years ago, so 

 many many years that one grows very 

 tired in trying to think how long ago it was ; in 

 those old days when the great Northwest consisted 

 of a few ragged and treeless hills, full of copper 

 and quartz, bordered by a dreary waste of sand- 

 flats, over which the Gulf of Mexico rolled its 

 warm and turbid waters as far north as Escanaba 

 and Eau Claire ; in the days when Marquette Har- 

 bor opened out towards Baffin's Bay, and the 

 Northern Ocean washed the crest of Mount Wash- 

 ington and wrote its name upon the Pictured 

 Rocks ; when the tide of the Pacific, hemmed in 

 by no snow-capped Sierras, came rushing through 

 the Golden Gate between the Ozarks and the 

 north peninsula of Michigan, and swept over 

 Plymouth Rock, and surged up against Bunker 

 Hill ; in the days when it would have been fun to 

 study geography, for there were no capitals, nor 

 any products, and all the towns were seaports ; — in 

 fact, an immensely long time ago there lived some- 

 where in the northeastern part of the State of 

 Wisconsin, not far from the city of Oconto, a little 

 jelly-fish. It was a curious little fellow, about the 

 shape of half an apple, and the size of a pin's head ; 

 and it floated around in the water, and ate little 



