242 WALKS AND TALKS. 



destined to be torn up in the human age, to serve as founda- 

 tion stones for more elegant structures. Through another age 

 still, the impending events, heralded by the floating log, were 

 destined to be delayed. Meantime the waters deepened, and 

 nature seemed to have forgotten her announcement. She had 

 promised land and green forests; she gave deep sea and an 

 expansion of the empire of bony-scaled ganoids. She gave 

 larger development to Brach'iopods ; she dallied with the 

 chambered shells, and gave the world an improved type, which 

 we have named Go-ni-a-ti'-tes. She lingered lovingly over one 

 of her ancient conceptions which we style crinoidal. She had 

 had it in her repertory of beautiful thoughts since early Cam- 

 brian times the pretty little stone lily. She had taken it up 

 in every age, and had turned off some improvements and some 

 new decorations. But now, during this waiting period, she 

 seems to have returned with true devotion to one of her first 

 ideas. She gave great attention to diversifying it, decorating 

 it, and filling the sea with its delicate and graceful forms. All 

 for the Age not for perpetuity ; for if, while we stand on 

 this verge of a grand epoch, we lift the veil which separates 

 the one beyond, we find the crinoidal conception gradually 

 falling into forgetfulness. Larger works occupied the hands 

 of nature, and she finally set apart the deep sea for the pres- 

 ervation of a few crinoidal illustrations for man's instruction, 

 and left them to await the last age as the European aurochs 

 still lingers in the protected forests of Lithuania, and the 

 American bison will continue to flourish in the Yellowstone 

 Park. 



This dream of placid waters and teeming populations was 

 broken by a jar. Some stay of the long pressed crust of 

 the earth was broken by the accumulated strain, and the mud 

 of the sea was stirred from its prolonged repose, and floated 

 over the fields where stone-lilies had flourished, generation after 

 generation. Tenants of the sea alarmed, retreated to deeper 

 waters or perished in their homes, and received a Pompeiian 

 burial. The ocean-bottom had been lifted to a higher level. 

 The scene was totally changed. The summer sea became a 



