36 Travels in a Tree- top 



rains, the brook had filled the little valley, 

 temporary rivulets had rushed with fury over 

 the clay, and cut in many places deep and 

 narrow transverse channels. From their steep 

 sides projefted many a pebble that gave us 

 " overhanging rocks," and one small bowlder 

 bridged a crevice in the clay, and was in use 

 at the time as a highway for a colony of ants. 

 Near it stood slender, conical pillars of 

 slightly cemented sand, some six inches in 

 height, and every one capped with a pebble 

 of greater diameter than the apex of the sup- 

 porting sand. These were indeed beautiful. 



" I have never seen them before," re- 

 marked the boy. 



" Very likely," I replied, " but you have 

 crushed them under foot by the dozens." 

 They were not to be overlooked now, 

 though, and in them he saw perfeft repro- 

 duftions of wonderful "monument rocks" 

 which he had so lately seen piftured in the 

 ponderous government geological report. 



Withdrawing to the field beyond, where a 

 bird's-eye view of the brook's course could 

 be obtained, we had spread out before us a 

 miniature, in most of its essentials, of a canon 

 country. The various tints of the clay gave 



