NATURE STUDY IX SCHOOLS. 1 '-' •' 



Up the lane and on the hill-side 



Overlooking meadows wide, 

 Where grows th' grass in deep luxuriance. 



In which both rail and bittern hide ; 



Winding brook and leafy woodland, 

 Where with lingering steps I stray, 



Thinking of the many mysteries 

 Found in childhood's happy day. 



Over all this pleasant landscape 



Twittering swallows come and go, 

 Darting onward through the sunlight, 



Sweeping over hedges low. 



Alas ! this is a vision only ; 



For around me palm trees stand, 

 While the wild waves of the Caribbean 



Roll in thunder on the strand. 



Cayman Brac, AriuL, 1888. 



SEDIMENTARY OK STRATIFIED ROCKS 



( Mechanically Formed ) 



BY 



Wm. D. Macpherson, 



As we have mentioned before, there are, roughly speaking, only two 

 kinds of rocks, first, the eruptive, or igneous, which were the first rocks when 

 the earth cooled from a red hot mass, and second, the sedimentary rocks 

 which have been formed either from ground up fragments of the lower igne- 

 ous rock, or from organic remains. Plants have left us vast beds of peat 

 lignite, coal, etc., and animals, the great mountain ranges of limestone. Coal, 

 and limestone are stratified rocks that have accumulated upon the lower ig- 

 neous rock bed. They were largely in the form of sediment deposited in 

 regular layers and then hardened, hence sedimentary. These sedimentary rocks 

 are classed as chemically formed, while the sedimentary stratified rocks tha t 

 we are to speak of to-day are formed simply mechanically. These are the 



