THE ORDEAL BY WATER. 19 



the contemporaries of the beasts which inhabited the ark ? 

 A conclusion thus hastily reached would have suited the 

 preceding age ; but the spirit of modern research bids us 

 examine farther. We lay down our little shell, and set out 

 upon the search for evidences to confirm the suspicions 

 already awakened, that it was once the home of a sea- 

 dwelling mollusc. 



Go with me first to the coast of the Gulf of Naples. 

 There, near the ancient town of Puzzuoli, at the head of an 

 indentation in the Bay of Baise, stand three marble pillars 

 forty feet in height. Their pedestals are washed by the 

 waters of the Mediterranean. The marble pavement upon 

 which they stand, and which was, in the second century, 

 the floor of a temple, or, perhaps, of a bath-house, is sunken 

 three feet beneath the waves. Six feet beneath this is an- 

 other costly pavement of mosaic, which must have formed 

 the original floor of the temple. What does all this indi- 

 cate ? The foundations of a temple would not be laid nine 

 feet beneath the level of the sea. They must have been 

 built upon the solid land. As the land subsided a new 

 foundation was laid, and a new structure was reared above 

 the encroaching waves. But look upward and examine 

 the surface of the marble. For twelve feet above their 

 pedestals these pillars are smooth and uninjured. Above 

 this is a zone of about nine feet, throughout which the mar- 

 ble is perforated with numerous holes. Exploring these 

 holes, we find them to enlarge inward, and at the bottom 

 of each repose the remains of a little boring bivalve shell — 

 Lithodomus. This little bivalve is the same species which 

 is now inhabiting the adjacent waters. We know well its 

 habits. It does not live in the open water. It burrows in 

 the sand, or bores its way into the shells of other molluscs, 

 or into solid stone. But it never climbs trees or marble 

 columns to build its nest, like a bird in the air. How, then, 



