II. 
THE SILURIAN BEACH. 
W ITH what interest do we look upon any 
relic of early human history ! The monu- 
ment that tells of a civilization whose hieroglyphic 
records we cannot even decipher, the slightest 
trace of a nation that vanished and left no sign 
of its life except the rough tools and utensils bu- 
ried in the old site of its towns or villages, arouses 
our imagination and excites our curiosity. Men 
gaze with awe at the inscription on an ancient 
Egyptian or Assyrian stone ; they hold with rev- 
erential touch the yellow parchment-roll whose 
dim, defaced characters record the meagre learn- 
ing of a buried nationality ; and the announce- 
ment, that for centuries the tropical forests of 
Central America have hidden within their tan- 
gled growth the ruined homes and temples of a 
past race, stirs the civilized world with a strange, 
deep wonder. 
To me it seems, that to look on the first land 
that was ever lifted above the waste of waters, to 
follow the shore where the earliest animals and 
