176 BY-WAYVS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
I have an exalted admiration of science, and 
place sincere trust in the outcome of its inves- 
tigations ; but I also sympathize most cordially 
with him who wishes he could have angled for 
Devonian fishes, or who sighs at the thought 
of the bird-songs of the earth’s morning 
twilight. 
But to return to our text. The curious sug- 
gestiveness of these fossil fragments of birds 
is not common to all the organic remains in 
the rocks. ‘The cast of a delicate wing-feather 
in the shale of the hills, is a fertilizer of the 
mind and a generator of strange visions. 
How far that little quill has been borne down 
the current of time! Where was the nest with 
its soft lining and its wonder of green or blue 
or marbled eggs? Did the fragrant leaves 
droop over and the May-wind breathe around? 
Was there a brook hard by with its painted 
pebbles and its liquid music : ? Why was there 
no sun-burnt boy—no bare-foot girl—no cabin 
on the hill? I know a sportsman or two 
whom it would delight to shoot over a middle 
cretaceous marsh or shore-meadow where a 
good bag of Apatornis and Schthyornis might 
be had! What a picnic it would be if one 
could prepare an ample luncheon and invite 
professors Gray, Coulter, Lesquereux, and 
many others to meet one in a jungle of the 
great Western Coal Basin before it was sub- 
merged! What botanizing there would be! 
As for me, I should like to tramp with Dr. 
Elliott Coues in the haunts of Archaeopteryx ! 
Let him collect skins while I make sketches ; 
let him dissect fresh subjects while I listen to 
the voices of the strange wilderness. I should 
like to see the pollen of earth’s first flowers 
