Civ] AND SYMBOLS. 49 



that class of evidence being accepted without proper 

 inquiry. Let us illustrate this by a reference to conchology. 

 Generally when a shell is found on our shores, it is presumed 

 to be a genuine British species and is classified as such ; on 

 the same principle that any plant, insect, reptile, bird, or 

 mammal is considered as indigenous if it be discovered in a 

 living state within the four seas. But this ought not to be the 

 case with shells. A collector might discover some spot on our 

 coast which was rich in shells hitherto excluded from the British 

 list, and yet be entirely mistaken if he* were to consider them 

 as true inhabitants of our shores. The fact is, that great 

 quantities of shells are often conveyed from one country to 

 another among the ballast, and when the sailors throw away 

 the ballast overboard, they also fling into the sea various shells 

 among the stones and sand. These shells are subsequently 

 washed up by the tides, or dashed on the shore in a storm, so 

 that they are picked up by hand, or enclosed in the multifarious 

 contents of a dredge. Sometimes, too, a ship in ballast is cast 

 upon the shore and beaten to pieces by the waves, when the 

 ballast is necessarily thrown out, and in a year or two becomes 

 a part of the shore. In this way many enterprising collectors 

 have been deceived, and their mistake has not been discovered 

 until many years afterwards. c. s. 



Civilisation a River. 



In its influence upon barbarism, and in its fructifying, 

 fertilising movement throughout the world, civilisation re- 

 sembles a beneficent river in a desert land. We may compare 

 it, for example, to the Nile. The ancient Egyptians looked 

 upon their country as a gift from the river, whose periodical 

 inundations yearly deposit on the soil a new layer of that fertile 

 mud to which the land of the Pharaohs owes its proverbial fecun- 

 dity. Fluvial deposits, by their gradual accumulation through a 

 long series of years, have constituted immense masses and entire 

 strata of soil. Egypt, in fact, was conquered from the desert 

 by the river. " The world," says Miss Martineau, " has seen 

 many struggles, but no other so pertinacious, so perdurable, and 

 so sublime as the conflict of these two great powers. The Nile, 



D 



