1 68 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NO TES. 



of the scientific guild, all the beauty of our age 

 must needs be traced back to an almost de- 

 moniac source in the palaeozoic 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 palaeozoic 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 Archcz- 

 opteryx is in 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 



