THE PAGE OF NATURE. 28.3 



array of cryptogamic plants, which preserved the balance 

 between the animal and the vegetable kingdoms of the 

 ancient world. Nature, by this curious process of em- 

 balming, has perpetuated that which a breath of wind 

 was sufficient to destroy, and moulded into a geologic 

 specimen what a finger's touch would fade. While rocks 

 and forests have been destroyed, without leaving a recog- 

 nisable trace of their existence behind, the most delicate 

 and fugacious organisms have been handed down to us 

 in the most beautiful preservation from the remote post-, 

 pliocene period the temporal and fragile thus trans- 

 formed into the eternal. 



There is a curious association connected with one of 

 the lowest species of fungi, which shows in a very strik- 

 ing manner the importance of the smallest objects, and 

 their claim to a closer attention than we are accustomed 

 to give them. During the voyage of Captain Penny in 

 search of Sir John Franklin, two pieces of floating drift- 

 wood were picked up in the Arctic regions, beyond the 

 utmost wanderings of the Esquimaux, which, from 

 several unusual appearances presented by them, excited 

 more interest than such a trivial incident in ordinary 

 circumstances would deserve. The one was found in 

 Robert's Bay, off Hamilton's Island, lat. 76 2' north, 

 long. 76 west, in the supposed route of the Erebus and 

 Terror through "Wellington Channel, and was evidently 

 a fragment of wrought elm plank which had formed 

 part of a ship's timbers. It exhibited three kinds of 

 surface ; one that had been planed and painted with 

 pitch, one merely roughly sawn, and the third split with 

 an axe. The other piece of drift-wood was picked up 



