168 BY-WAYVS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
of the scientific guild, all the beauty of our age 
must needs be traced back to an almost de- 
moniac source in the palzozoic gardens of 
monsters, where birds had awful teeth, and 
where hideous saurian-like beings had wings 
with which to flap wildly through the poison- 
ous air. Unfortunately enough the rocks 
grimly stand up, and testify for the theory of 
the scientists with a persistence and a lack of 
poetical appreciation of the beautiful truly ex- 
asperating. That there were, in those days 
when nature was over lusty and young, birds, 
fishes and reptiles fearfully and wonderfully 
made, cannot be for a moment doubted. It 
would look, to one not thoroughly learned in 
the records of the palaozoic ages, as if the 
creative power had been feeling its way, hesi- 
tating here, faltering there, gathering confi- 
dence from experience, and slowly finding out 
the precious secrets of life-development. 
Here and there, at wide intervals, as regards 
both space and time, the rocks give up bird- 
notes, so to. speak. The poet may, by holding 
his ear close to the strange, blurred impres- 
sions in the stones, hear the cries, the hoarse 
screams, the clanging trumpet-blasts of the 
huge land-birds and water-fowl that haunted 
the woods and streams and seas in that time 
when nearly the whole earth was a tropical re- 
gion. He may hear the twitter of sparrows, 
too, and the careless laugh of the kingfisher. 
The slab containing the remains of Arche- 
opteryx isin the British Museum. It is an ob- 
long piece of lithographic slate. The shreds 
of the bird lie thereon in such confusion as 
would mark the spot where an owl or a gos- 
hawk had eaten a blue-jay. The bones of the 
