34 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 
and the very wind that blew sometimes re- 
corded the direction whence they came, and 
we may read in the rocks, also, accounts of 
freshets sweeping down with turbid waters, and 
of long periods of drouth, when the land was 
parched and lakes and rivers shrank beneath 
the burning sun. 
All these things have been told and retold ; 
but, as there are many who have not read 
Mr. Hutchinson’s books and to whom Buck- 
land is quite unknown, it may be excusable 
to add something to what has already been 
said in the first chapter of these impressions — 
of the past. 
The very earliest suggestion we have of the 
presence of animal life upon this globe is in 
the form of certain long dark streaks below 
the Cambrian of England, considered to be 
traces of the burrows of worms that were filled 
with fine mud, and while this interpretation 
may be wrong there is, on the other hand, no 
reason why it may not be correct. Plant and 
animal life must have had very lowly begin- 
nings, and it is not at all probable that we 
shall find any trace of the simple and minute 
