THE STORY OF A STONE. 201 



time of the old fishes came and went, and many 

 more times came and went, but still Favosites lay 

 in the ground at Oconto. 



Then came the long, hot, wet summer, when the 

 mists hung over the earth so thick that you might 

 have had to cut your way through them with a 

 knife ; and great ferns and rushes, big as an oak 

 and tall as a steeple, grew in the swamps of Indi- 

 ana and Illinois. Their green plumes were so long 

 and so densely interwoven that the Man of the 

 Moon might have fancied that the earth was feath- 

 ering out. Then all about, huge reptiles, with jaws 

 like the gates of doom and teeth like cross-cut 

 saws, and little reptiles with wings like bats, 

 crawled, and swam, and flew. 



But the ferns died, and the reptiles died, and 

 the rush-trees fell in the swamps, and the Illinois 

 and the Sangamon and the Wabash and all the 

 other rivers covered them up. They stewed away 

 under layers of clay and sand, till at last they 

 turned into coal and wept bitter tears of petro- 

 leum. But all this while Favosites lay in the rocks 

 in Wisconsin. 



Then the mists cleared away, and the sun shone, 

 and the grass began to grow, and strange animals 

 came from somewhere or nowhere to feed upon it. 

 There were queer little striped horses, with three 

 or four hoofs on each foot, and no bigger than a 

 Newfoundland dog, but as smart as ever you saw. 

 There were great hairy elephants with teeth like 

 sticks of wood. There were hogs with noses so 

 long that they could sit on their hind legs and root. 

 And there were many still stranger creatures which 



