SKETCH OF 



THE FLORIDA REEFS AND KEYS. 



REPRINTED FROM THE "METHODS OF STUDY." 



The physical as well as the human history of the world has its mythical 

 age, lying dim and vague in the morning mists of creation, like that of the 

 heroes and demigods in the early traditions of man, defying all our ordinary 

 dates and measures. But if the succession of periods that prepared the 

 earth for the coming of man, and the animals and plants that accompany 

 him on earth, baffles our finite attempts to estimate its duration, have we 

 any means of determining even approximately the length of the period to 

 which we ourselves belong ? If so, it may furnish us with some data for 

 the further solution of these wonderful mysteries of time, and it is besides 

 of especial importance with reference to the question of permanence of 

 species. 



Those who maintain the mutability of species, and account for all the 

 variety of life on earth by the gradual changes wrought by time and cir- 

 cumstances, do not accept historical evidence as affecting the question at all. 

 The relics of those oldest nations, all whose history is preserved in monu- 

 mental records, do not indicate the slightest variation of organic types from 

 the earliest epoch to this day. The animals preserved within their tombs 

 or carved upon the walls of their monuments by the ancient Egyptians 

 were the same as those that have their home in the valley of the Nile 

 to-day ; the negro, whose peculiar features are unmistakable even in their 

 rude artistic attempts to represent them, was the same woolly-haired, thick- 

 lipped, flat-nosed, dark-skinned being in the days of the Rameses that he 

 is now. The apis, the ibis, the crocodiles, the sacred beetles, have brought 

 down to us unchanged all the characters that superstition hallowed in those 



