A NATURAL PAPER MILL. 281* 



artful spider. The web proper is gone, the spider can not be 

 found, but there is the story all told inside of half an inch's space. 

 Farther on are the feathers of a bird, evidently a sparrow, which 

 were probably torn out by a ravenous hawk. Yes, here is a spat- 

 ter of blood on the paper that the rains have failed to erase and 

 will never wash out, though that paper is buried for years. 

 Across the middle of the sheet is where an earthworm has trav- 

 eled, and near at hand is the track of a mole, its mortal enemy. 

 The mole followed the worm, and the footprints mar the straight 

 channel made by the annelid all the way. A broad wavy line in 

 one corner shows where a snake has been along, seeking for stray 

 bugs, and over all the slimy tracks of the slow but industrious 

 snails shine like mica. In addition to these, I find the fragments 

 of a cabbage butterfly's wing with the powder still clinging in 

 places; a few hairs of a muskrat, loosened, perhaps, by a preda- 

 tory mink ; several dead dragonflies, as stiff as mummies ; the 

 head of a dead ant, with his big eyes staring at me as if in re- 

 proach ; the cases of two caddice worms ; and bits of severed twigs 

 and grass and leaves and bark innumerable. I have found all 

 these sitting here and looking at the paper I have torn up and 

 which has not surface enough to cover the top of my desk ; but 

 the tale it tells is the history of the whole summer with its loves 

 and hates and mirth and music simply the story of one sum- 

 mer printed in pictures on paper, and issued by Nature to file 

 away in her great library of past events. 



Below the top pages are the other books of this valuable col- 

 lection. Every sheet represents a year. Possibly, in seasons 

 where two dry spells with an intervening period of continued 

 rainfall occur, there may be two sheets of paper issued in a year ; 

 but then, again, there have been very wet years when no paper at 

 all could be made, so it is safe to count on one sheet a' year. Tak- 

 ing this as the basis of my calculations, I dig out a bit of the 

 record on the point of my spade about midway to the bottom and 

 count up how many sheets I cut through in going down an inch. 

 The sheets are very fine and closely pressed, so I find trouble in 

 counting, but after several trials I feel sure the average is fully 

 three hundred sheets to an inch, which would make thirty-six 

 hundred sheets to every foot in depth. Now, my spade blade is 

 a foot long, and below this is as much more, and that takes me 

 away back of any historical record now extant. So here I have a 

 paper factory that is more than seven thousand years old, and 

 the same blue clay and sand and shells were under it then that 

 are there now. Yet my paper mill was started in modern times 

 when the glacier works were on the surrounding hills no plainer 

 than they are to-day. 



Beyond doubt this little handful of crumbling, grass-im- 



VOL. XLVIII. 19* 



