Ill 



IMPRESSIONS OF THE PAST 



" The weird palimpsest, old and vast, 

 Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past." 



The Rev. H. N. Hutchinson commences one of his 

 interesting books with Emerson's saying, "that Every- 

 thing in nature is engaged in writing its own history;" 

 and, as this remark cannot be improved on, it may well 

 stand at the head of a chapter dealing with the foot- 

 prints that the creatures of yore left on the sands of the 

 sea-shore, the mud of a long-vanished lake bottom, or 

 the shrunken bed of some water-course. Not only have 

 creatures that walked left a record of their progress, 

 but the worms that burrowed in the sand, the shell-fish 

 that trailed over the mud when the tide was low, the 

 stranded crab as he scuttled back to the sea — each and 

 all left some mark to tell of their former presence. Even 

 the rain that fell and the very wind that blew some- 

 times recorded the direction whence they came, and we 

 may read in the rocks, also, accounts of freshets sweep- 

 ing down with turbid waters, and of long periods of 

 drouth, when the land was parched and lakes and rivers 

 shrank beneath the burning sun. 



All these things have been told and retold; but, as 

 there are many who have not read Mr. Hutchinson's 

 books and to whom Buckland is quite unknown, it 

 may be excusable to add something to what has 

 already been said in the first chapter of these impres- 

 sions of the past. 



The very earliest suggestion we have of the presence 

 of animal life upon this globe is in the form of certain 

 long dark streaks below the Cambrian of England, con- 

 sidered to be traces of the burrows of worms that were 



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