April, 1892 . 
DECAY IN NATURE. 
78 
DECAY IN NATURE.* 
BY CHARLES CALLAWAY, D.SC., M.A. 
The primary object of this club is the study of natural 
history, geology, and archaeology. Our field of work is a very 
wide one. The grass of the fields, the flowers by the way- 
side, the insects that delight us with their beauty or annoy us 
by their sting, the gravel under our feet, the running brooks, 
the hills and vales that give such a charm to our country, 
are but a part of the wonders that Nature invites us to study. 
Our mother Nature is indeed a most comprehensive teacher. 
What we know is but the A, B, C of what we shall know. 
Behind the laws which science has revealed to man, there are 
hidden other laws which we are almost driven to believe 
are grander than any of which the human mind has 
yet conceived. Nature invites us to enter her school ; to 
the diligent student she gives a rich reward—friendship with 
herself. She loves them that love her ; but it is only to her 
real lovers that she unveils her beauty ; neglect of her she 
punishes with a terrible penalty—the penalty of ignorance. 
But there are some aspects of Nature which seem far 
from beautiful. The grass withers, the flower fades, the 
insect flutters its brief day in the sunshine and then perishes ; 
the nightingale delights us with its liquid music for a season, 
but death soon stops its song; a thousand forms of life, which 
in the spring are full of joy and vigour, fall sick when the 
winter comes, and die. Decay is everywhere the end of 
Nature's works. Even the solid granite cliff that seems 
impregnable to time, yields at last to his unceasing attacks, 
crumbles gradually away, and disappears. Mountain ranges, 
whose summits tower to the clouds, perish as certainly and 
inevitably as the sand heaps on the sea shore. 
“ The hills are shadows, and they flow 
From form to form, and nothing stands ; 
They melt like mist; the solid lands, 
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.” 
In these fine lines, Tennyson, as usual, is true to the facts 
of science. The sea once flowed where now the peaks of the 
Himalayas rise 29,000ft. above its present level; but in the 
lapse of ages those lofty summits will be worn down to mere 
stumps, and may form submarine banks in a future ocean. 
In a former epoch of the earth’s history, our Salopian region 
was occupied with clusters of volcanoes, which grew in size, 
age by age, as the lavas and ashes accumulated around their 
Being the retiring Presidential Address to the Severn Valley 
Field Club on March 15th, 1892. 
