ITl 
IMPRESSIONS OF THE PAST 
* The weird palimpsest, old and vast, 
Wherein thou hid’st the spectral past.” 
The Rev. H. N. Hutchinson commences one 
of his interesting books with Emerson’s say- 
ing, ‘that Everything in nature is engaged in 
writing its own history ;” and, as this remark 
cannot be improved on, it may well stand at 
the head of a chapter dealing with the foot- 
prints that the creatures of yore left on the 
sands of the sea-shore, the mud of a long-van- 
ished lake bottom, or the shrunken bed of some 
water-course. Not only have creatures that 
walked left a record of their progress, but the 
worms that burrowed in the sand, the shell-fish 
that trailed over the mud when the tide was 
low, the stranded crab as he scuttled back to 
the sea — each and all left some mark to tell 
of their former presence. Even the rain that fell 
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