Ill 



IMPRESSIONS OF THE PAST 



'* The weird palimpsest, old and vast, 

 Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past." 



The Rev. H. N. Hutchinson commences one 

 of his interesting books with Emerson's say- 

 ing, " that Everything in nature is engaged in 

 writing its own history;" and, as this remark 

 cannot be improved on, it may well stand at 

 the head of a chapter dealing with the foot- 

 prints that the creatures of yore left on the 

 sands of the sea-shore, the mud of a long- van- 

 ished lake bottom, or the shrunken bed of some 

 water-course. Not only have creatures that 

 walked left a record of their progress, but the 

 worms that burrowed in the sand, the shell-fish 

 that trailed over the mud when the tide was 

 low, the stranded crab as he scuttled back to 

 the sea — each and all left some mark to tell 

 of their former presence. Even the rain that fell 



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