224 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 
THE STORY OF A STONE. 
NCE on a time, a great many years ago, so 
many many years that one grows very 
tired in trying to think how long ago it was; in 
those old days when the great Northwest consisted 
of a few ragged and treeless hills, full of copper 
and quartz, bordered by a dreary waste of sand- 
flats, over which the Gulf of Mexico rolled its 
warm and turbid waters as far north as Escanaba 
and Eau Claire; in the days when Marquette Har- 
bor opened out towards Baffin’s Bay, and the 
Northern Ocean washed the crest of Mount Wash- 
ington and wrote its name upon the Pictured 
Rocks; when the tide of the Pacific, hemmed in 
by no snow-capped Sierras, came rushing through 
the Golden Gate between the Ozarks and the 
north peninsula of Michigan, and swept over 
Plymouth Rock, and surged up against Bunker 
Hill; inthe days when it would have been fun to 
study geography, for there were no capitals, nor 
any products, and all the towns were seaports ; — in’ 
fact, an immensely long time ago there lived some- 
where in the northeastern part of the State of 
Wisconsin, not far from the city of Oconto, a little 
jelly-fish. It was a curious little fellow, about the 
shape of half an apple, and the size of a pin’s head; 
and it floated around in the water, and ate little 
