238 SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



hills, and their generally calcareous waters precipitated, 

 by degrees, a bed of fine calcareous mud. To this were 

 added the dead shells of myriads of little molluscs that 

 flourished uj:>on the lime held by the waters. The bottom 

 of each lakelet became a bed of marl. But all around the 

 margins of the lakelet the grasses and sedges were vying 

 with each other in venturing into the water. The amphib- 

 ious rushes put them both to shame by raising their dirty 

 heads sheer through the slime of the lakelet's bottom. 

 And there they stood — the rushes up to their knees in 

 water, and the sedges and grasses scarcely over shoe. 

 And every leaf and stem which fell upon the water or found 

 its way to the shore, became entangled in the herbage, and 

 lay down and rotted there; and the rush, and the sedge, 

 and grass, when shrill November came, 



"With wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear," 



bowed their heads in his presence, and wrapped themselves 

 in the cerements that had gathered about them. Thus a 

 soft bed of vegetable mould fringed the lakelet, and over- 

 lapped the deposit of marl which was growing beneath the 

 water. From year to year, as the water shallowed about 

 the margins, encroaching vegetation crowded farther and 

 farther toward the centre of the lakelet. I have not seen 

 the beginning of this process ; but at that period of time in 

 which I have been permitted to begin my observations, I 

 find these changes in progress. I have detected Nature in 

 mediis rebus. The little herb standing by the water's brink 

 this year, dies, and forms a deposit exactly like that which 

 was formed in the year before my eyes — or any human 

 eyes — detected the character of these vicissitudes ; and my 

 logic compels me to reason from that which I have seen to 

 that which no man has seen. And so it is of the changes 

 upon the ocean's shore, until the facts of the passing world 



