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 Archce- 

 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 



