186 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
the beds, while myriads of little circular hollows remain, — the imprints 
of primeval showers. Strange that such fleeting incidents should be 
the most ancient records of the world, and stranger still that tracks of 
the soft worms and sea-weeds of the primeval shores should be the first 
organic fossils. Two holes in the sands upon our shores mark to the 
fisherman's eye the habitation of the lob-worm. On the wave-marked 
surfaces of these primitive shales, hundreds of such worm-burrows 
are crowded together in the greatest profusion. Some are small, 
others large, and in pairs, indicating the entrances and the outlets, as 
in those now living on our coasts. Sometimes the burrow-holes, oblite- 
rated by the rasping action of the waves on the flat shores, have been 
preserved in the hollows of the ripple-marks, or the furrows of the 
runnels, which during the recess of the tides had worked their pigmy 
gorges in the sand. 
As the breath of the primeval winds passed over the primeval 
shores, it ruffled gently up the fine sandy mud, which, hardening in 
the sun or drying in the wind when the waters receded, was, on their 
return, covered up by a coating of fine silt. Each succeeding tide 
added layer to layer, and thus, by the gentle and successive deposit of 
films of mud, the records of the most evanescent meteorological 
phenomena have been retained and preserved. 
Thus have been preserved the ripple-marks ; and from them, more- 
over, we learn the direction and force of the wind that formed them. 
The particles of matter moved by its power would travel up the 
longest incline of the ripple-mound, and fall down by its own 
momentum on the steepest slope ; and, as on our present shores, it 
will be seen that the general trend of the ripple-mounds and -furrows 
is at right angles to the point from whence the wind blows ; by the 
converse of the rule, a straight line di'awn at right angles to the trend 
of the fossil ripple-marks must point to the quarter whence the 
breeze which formed it issued. 
In the same manner, by successive covering by pellicles of fresh 
mud, have the sun-cracks, the rain-drops, and the worm-holes been 
pi-eserved. 
In the specimen figured in Plate VII. the rain- drops were much 
