THE GARDEN OF STONE LILIES. 



107 



these new tribes ? A convulsion of nature shuts them off 

 from, a lineal connection with the generations of the Pots- 

 dam period — a convulsion which moulded the basin of 

 Lake Superior (Fig. 30) and notched its southern shore 

 with Kewenaw Point. We descry, moreover, among these 

 new populations forms which could not possibly sustain 

 any genetic relation to their predecessors in the line of 

 being. These all are new creations. There is no avoiding 

 the conclusion. The omnific fiat of the Creator has again 

 gone forth, and swarms of beings innumerable start from 

 the teeming and prolific deep. Encrinites now first adorn 

 the flowery chambers of the sea — one of the new ideas 

 just realized from the Creative 

 Mind — flower -like, with slender 

 stem affixed to the submarine 

 soil, a delicate corolla uplifted 

 on its extremity, and petals del- 

 icately fringed expanded to the 

 diluted sunlight of the smiling 

 heavens above, struggling down 

 to the coral meadows on which 

 they flourished. And these were 

 animals. With all their plant-like 

 form, and grace, and delicacy, and 

 attachment to the soil, these new 



and wonderful creations had sen- 

 Fig. 40. Peutacrinns caput -Me- •-, •■>•, n .„ -, . -, ,, . 



aW. a criuoid living in the sibihty and will, and enjoyed their 

 allotment at that early age of the 

 world, and at that depth beneath the cheerful sunlight, and 

 the caressing breeze, and the vital air, as the butterfly now, 

 which is borne upon the sunbeam from flower to flower, 

 and sips the sweetest nectar from the fairest creations of 

 the vegetable world. All over the area of the Northern 

 and Western States, and as far south as Alabama and Mis- 



