294 FACT AGAINST FICTION. 



only seek for tlicm, in a handwriting on a wall of 

 imperishable rock, that does not and cannot vanish. 

 Bcncatli the walls of the modern Babylon, below 

 the fomidations of palace and prison, in the truthful 

 clay beneath London, lie secrets that tell us that 

 the climate of our little isle and of the continent 

 was then far colder than it is even yet become; 

 that races of reptiles, huge animals, and birds have 

 passed away, and made room for those with which 

 we now are conversant. 



If we go further into the congealed trutlis locked 

 up in the cabinets of creation, we find irrefragable 

 proof that climates have changed altogether; that 

 those animals which were once the inhabitants of 

 hot and sultry climes lie now beneath a colder 

 hemisphere ; and that the elephant, which, within 

 the memory of man, is only to be found beneath a 

 torrid zone, had been clothed, in times long gone 

 by, with a rough, shaggy coat, to protect him from 

 a polar winter. 



