PLANT-MUMMIES. 237 



tender sympathy, spread a pall of white sand and bright 

 colored stones over their buried bodies. A new race 

 sprang up from the exuberant bosom of nature ; it also 

 was laid low, and buried under massive rocks and green 

 turf, and a new forest rose, phoenix like, from its ashes. 

 And again and again the furious tempest swept along, 

 and covered them with dense layers of sand, or heaped 

 rocks over their grave, as if he would fain have silenced 

 forever the revengeful whisper of antediluvian forests. 

 There are places on earth, where one hundred and fifty 

 of such successive generations may distinctly be counted ! 

 But tenderly as nature had covered their dead bodies, 

 still their race was not yet run, their purpose but half 

 fulfilled. Tree by tree, and herb by herb, they lay peace- 

 fully in their grave. The storm sighed no longer in their 

 branches, the upheaving earth shook not their lofty trunks. 

 Warmly imbedded they slept in their quiet chambers. 

 Thousands of years passed, and their rest was unbroken, 

 their very existence unknown. No human eye had seen 

 them in their prime ; they had died and sunk into their 

 grave long before man dwelt in the world. But now, 

 after centuries, man came and made his way through vast 

 layers of clay and firm strata of rock ; he descended into 

 the deep of the earth, to exhume the huge forests that 

 had lain there buried since the days of creation. He 

 brought them forth, the corpses of long forgotten plants, 

 to the light of a sun they had never seen before ; he 

 made their remains to work for him his busiest servants, 

 his most efficient slaves. It was thus that the ruins of 



