The Plains of Patagonia. 223 



earth ; forest and river and hill ; the blue haze and 

 distant horizon ; shadows of clouds sweeping over 

 the sun-flushed landscape — to see it all is like re- 

 turning to a home, which is more truly our home 

 than any habitation we know. The cry of the 

 wild bird pierces us to the heart ; we have never 

 heard that cry before, and it is more familiar to us 

 than our mother's voice. " I heard," says Thoreau, 

 " a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for 

 many a thousand years, methought, whose note I 

 shall not forget for many a thousand more, — the 

 same sweet and powerful song as of yore. the 

 evening robin ! " Hafiz sings : — 



breeze of the morning blow me a memory of the ancient time ; 

 If after a thousand years thy odours should float o'er my dust, 

 My bones, fall of gladness uprising, would dance in the sepulchre ! 



And we ourselves are the living sepulchres of a 

 dead past — that past which was ours for so many 

 thousands of years before this life of the present 

 began; its old bones are slumbering in us — dead, 

 and yet not dead nor deaf to JNature's voices; the 

 noisy burn, the roar of the waterfall, and thunder 

 of long waves on the shore, and the sound of rain 

 and whispering winds in the multitudinous leaves, 

 bring it a memory of the ancient time ; and the 

 bones rejoice and dance in their sepulchre. 



Professor W. K. Parker, in his work On Mam- 

 malian Descent, speaking of the hairy covering 

 almost universal in this class of animals, says : 

 " This has become, as every one knows, a custom 



