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CHAPTER XIL 



FEW of those who stand near some quarry m our in- 

 land counties, surrounded by all the beauties of 

 British scenery, hill and valley, down and field, luxuriant 

 with woods, carpeted with herbage, or waving with corn, 

 bestow a thought on the character of the rock beneath. 

 It occurs not to many, that where the grass now grows and 

 the cattle low the waves once flowed ; and that the rip- 

 ple-mark may still be seen on what was once the ribbed 

 sea sand. 



To those who are unacquainted with geology, it is 

 startling to be told that the solid slab of stone so marked, 

 when last exposed thousands of years ago, was part of the 

 sandy shore over which the animated beings, now blotted 

 from the book of life, wended their way, leaving in many 

 cases the traces of their steps, just before some great con- 

 vulsion of our planet changed the whole appearance of 

 the surface, but spared these unmistakeable records to 

 tell the tale. 



No one with any powers of generalization can long 

 study the system of animated nature without being satis- 

 fied that he must search among the wrecks of bygone 

 ages for those forms which are required to make it com- 

 plete, and that in the fossil fauna he will find the lost 

 links of the broken chain. 



Among the ichnolites, or fossil foot-prints, which have 

 attracted so much attention of late years, those announced 

 by Dr. Ogier Ward, as proving the existence of a small 

 four-footed animal at the period of the deposition of the 

 new red sandstone near Shrewsbury, were brought under 

 the notice of the British Association at Birmingham. 



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