A STUDY OF BONES. 59 



VI. 



A STUDY OF BONES. 



ON the top of this bleak chalk down, where 

 I am wandering on a dull afternoon, I light 

 upon the blanched skeleton of a crow, which 

 I need not fear to handle, as its bones have 

 been first picked clean by carrion birds, and 

 then finally purified by hungry ants, time, 

 and stormy weather. I pick a piece of it 

 up in my hands, and find that I have got 

 hold of its clumped tail-bone. A strange 

 fragment truly, with a strange history, which 

 I may well spell out as I sit to rest a minute 

 upon the neighbouring stile. For this dry 

 tail-bone consists, as I can see at a glance, 

 of several separate vertebrae, all firmly 



