342 THE ORCHIDS. 
surmised, that the fish stranded in the lagoon were buta 
very small portion of the original shoal which entered Ander- | 
son’s Cove, and thus, supposing the locality had been many 
times larger, there would have been no diminution in rela- 
tive density of the dead fishes on its area. 
Another example is recorded in the Journal of the Geolog- 
ical Society of London.* Thousands of dead fishes, thrown 
on the coast of Madras, were afterwards enveloped in sand 
and mud along with other marine animals and plants, £0 #8 
to form a densely packed stratum of fishes, etc., of unknown 
breadth, but extending for a vast distance along the coast- 
line. The fishes were supposed to have been destroyed by 
the enormous fall of rain from the south-west monsoon, re- 
dering the sea-water less saline. Be that the cause oF not, 
it is by such facts as these, compared with similar phenomena 
of by-gone epochs, that the geologist is enabled to arrive at 
just conclusions, and it is in this way that the science of 
geology is progressing. 

THE ORCHIDS. 
BY C. M. TRACY. 

Ir was the greatest step forward ever made at once 1M g 
study of plants, when Jussieu found out that there ye 
grand line of division running through the whole vegeta j 
kingdom, with seeds on one side that might be split into a 
parts like the pea and the acorn, and those on the other . 
could not, like the kernel of corn and the grain of ber 
rds) it wi 
directly seen that the same line would clearly distn 
between those plants that had a bark and made 
: and thus grew e 
between that and the older wood within, 
* June, 1862. 

