BIRDS OF THE ROCKS. 167 



rare, pungent, strangely powerful suggestive- 

 ness of that which fills the atmosphere sur 

 rounding facts. The chief fallacy of the scien 

 tific attitude is that which leans with confi 

 dence on the prosy for the sake of its prose, 

 at the same time shrinking from the poetical 

 on account of its poetry. The geologist feels 

 in some way honor-bound to avoid coming to 

 a picturesque conclusion with his catalogue of 

 facts. The catalogue must remain a catalogue. 

 A sense of shame would accompany any 

 thought of connecting imagination with his 

 theory of the record of the rocks. 



But, despite the geologists, there is a great 

 deal of picturesqueness and poetry in the dis 

 closures of the fossil beds. Set in matrices of 

 carbonate of lime, magnesia, silica, and the 

 oxides of iron, one may find the compressed 

 and fragmentary remains of a life that flour 

 ished before our hills and mountains were 

 made. This is a statement as trite, dry, and 

 lifeless as the fossils themselves. But when 

 one comes upon a mass of feathers disposed 

 about a strange bird-skeleton imbedded in rock 

 many thousands of years old, one may as well 

 think of what song Archceopteryx sang as of 

 what food it ate, or of how it used its long ver 

 tebrate tail. What colors had its wings and 

 breast and crest ? Were the rectrices that 

 flared out on each side of the twenty vertebrae 

 of that strange tail dyed with rainbow hues ? 

 These are the questions with which the scien 

 tist is ashamed to play ; but the poet may ask 

 them of the rocks, and work out the answers, 

 by the rules of the imagination, to his fullest 

 satisfaction. 



In accordance with some unchangeable law 



