light it up with a rich flood of golden splendor. The base of the cliffs consists entirely of a very soft and plastic blue lias mud. This mud contains large numbers of fossils, chiefly chambered shells, but mixed with not a few relics of the great swimming and flying lizards that swarmed among the shallow flats or low islands of the lias sea. When the blue mud was slowly accumulating in the hollows of the ancient bottom, these huge saurians formed practically the highest race of animals then existing upon earth. There were, it is true, a few primeval kangaroo-mice and wombats among the rank brushwood of the mainland; and there may even have been a species or two of reptilian birds, with murderous-looking teeth and long lizard-like tails-descendants of those problematical creatures which printed their footmarks on the American trias, and ancestors of the later toothed bird whose tail-feathers have been naturally lithographed for us on the Solenhofen slate. But in spite of such rare precursors of higher modern types, the saurian was in fact the real lord of earth in the lias ocean. For him did his high sun flame, and his river billowing ran, nology as I sit on this piece of fallen chalk at the foot of the mouldering cliff, where the stream from the meadow above brought down the newest landslip during the hard frosts of last December. First of all, there is the vast lapse of time represented by the Laurentian rocks of Canada. These Laurentian rocks, the oldest in the world, are at least 30,000 feet in thickness, and it must be allowed that it takes a reasonable number of years to accumulate such a mass of solid limestone or clay as that at the bottom of even the widest primeval ocean. In these rocks there are no fossils, except a single very doubtful member of the very lowest animal type. But there are indirect traces of life in the shape of limestone probably derived from shells, and of black lead probably derived from plants. All these early deposits have been terribly twisted and contorted by subsequent convulsions of the earth, and most of them have been melted down by volcanic action; so that we can tell. very little about their original state. Thus the history of life opens for us, like most other histories, with a period of uncertainty: its origin is lost in the distant vistas of time. Still, we know that there was such an early period; And he felt himself in his pride to be and from the thickness of the rocks nature's crowing race. which represent it we may conjecture We have adopted an easy and slovenly that it spread over three out of the ten way of dividing all rocks into primary, great æons into which I have roughly secondary, and tertiary, which veils divided geological time. Next comes from us the real chronological relations the period known as the Cambrian, and of evolving life in the different periods. to it we may similarly assign about two The lias is ranked by geologists among and a half æons on like grounds. The the earliest secondary formations; but Cambrian epoch begins with a fair if we were to distribute all the sedi- sprinkling of the lower animals and mentary rocks into ten great epochs, plants, presumably developed during each representing about equal duration the preceding age; but it shows no rein time, the lias would really fall in the mains of fish or any other vertebrates. tenth and latest of all. So very mis-To the Silurian, Devonian, and Carleading to the ordinary mind is our ac- boniferous periods we may roughly alcepted geological nomenclature. Nay, low an æon and a fraction each; while even commonplace geologists them- to the whole group of secondary and selves often overlook the real implica- tertiary strata, comprising almost all the tions of many facts and figures which best-known English formations-red they have learned to quote glibly enough in a certain off-hand way. Let me just briefly reconstruct the chief features of this scarcely recognized world's chro marl, lias, oolite, greensand, chalk, eocene, miocene, pliocene, and drift-we can only give a single æon to be divided between them. Such facts will sufficiently suggest how comparatively | between species and species. Even at modern are all these rocks when viewed the time when this assertion was origby the light of an absolute chronology. inally made it was quite untenable. Now, the first fishes do not occur till All early geological forms, of whatever the Silurian--that is to say, in or about race, belong to what we foolishly call the seventh æon after the beginning of "generalized" types: that is to say, geological time. The first mammals they present a mixture of features now are found in the trias, at the beginning found separately in several different aniof the tenth æon. And the first known mals. In other words, they represent bird only makes its appearance in the early ancestors of all the modern forms, oolite, about half way through that with peculiarities intermediate between latest period. This will show that there those of their more highly differentiated was plenty of time for their develop- descendants; and hence we ought to ment in the earlier ages. True, we call them “ unspecialized " rather than must reckon the interval between our- generalized types. For example, the earliest ancestral horse is partly a horse and partly a tapir: we may regard him as a tertium quid, a middle term, from which the horse has varied in one direction and the tapir in another, each of them exaggerating certain special peculiarities of the common ancestor and losing others, in accordance with the circumstances in which they have been placed. Science is now perpetually discovering intermediate forms, many of which compose an unbroken series between the unspecialized ancestral type and the familiar modern creatures. Thus, in this very case of the horse, Professor Marsh has unearthed a long line of fossil animals which lead in direct descent from the extremely unhorse-like eocene type to the developed Arab of our own times. Similarly with birds, Professor Huxley has shown that there is hardly any gap between the very bird-like lizards of the lias and the very lizard-like birds of the oolite. Such links, discovered afresh every day, are perpetual denials to the old parrot-like cry of "No geological evidence for evolution.” selves and the date of this blue mud at many millions of years; but then we must reckon the interval between the lias and the earliest Cambrian strata at some six times as much, and between the lias and the lowest Laurentian beds at nearly ten times as much. Just the same sort of lessening perspective exists in geology as in ordinary history. Most people look upon the age before the Norman conquest as a mere brief episode of the English annals; yet six whole centuries elapsed between the landing of the real or mythical Hengst at Ebbsfleet and the landing of William the Conqueror at Hastings; while under eight centuries elapsed between the time of William the Conqueror and the accession of Queen Victoria. But, just as most English histories give far more space to the three centuries since Elizabeth than to the eleven centuries which preceded them, so most books on geology give far more space to the single æon (embracing the secondary and tertiary periods) which comes nearest our own time, than to the nine æons which spread from the Laurentian to the Carboniferous epoch. In the earliest period, records either geological or historical are wholly wanting; in the later periods they become both more numerous and more varied in proportion as IN the bank which supports the they approach nearer and nearer to our hedge, beside this little hanger on the own time. flank of Black Down, the glossy arrowSo, too, in the days when Mr. Dar-headed leaves of the common arum first took away the breath of scien- | form at this moment beautiful masses of tific Europe by his startling theories, it vivid green foliage. "Cuckoo-pint" used confidently to be said that geology is the pretty poetical old English name had shown us no intermediate form for the plant; but village children know, VIII. CUCKOO-PINT. it better by the equally quaint and compound organism. For we must fanciful title of "lords and ladies." never forget that all plants mainly The arum is not now in flower it grow, not, as most people suppose, blossomed much earlier in the season, from the earth, but from the air. They and its queer clustered fruits are just at are for the most part mere masses of present swelling out into rather shape- carbon-compounds, and the carbon in less little light green bulbs, preparatory them comes from the carbonic acid to assuming the bright coral-red hue diffused through the atmosphere around, which makes them so conspicuous and is separated by the sunlight acting among the hedgerows during the au- in the leaves. There it mixes with tumn months. A cut-and-dry technical small quantities of hydrogen and nitrobotanist would therefore have little to gen brought by the roots from soil and say to it in its present stage, because water; and the starches or other bodies he cares only for the flowers and seeds thus formed are then conveyed by the which help him in his dreary classifica- sap to the places where they will be retions, and give him so splendid an op-quired in the economy of the plant sysportunity for displaying the treasures tem. That is the all-important fact in of his Latinized terminology. But to me the plant itself is the central point of interest, not the names (mostly in bad Greek) by which this or that local orchid-hunter has endeavored to earn immortality. vegetable physiology, just as the digestion and assimilation of food and the circulation of the blood are in our own bodies. The arum, like the grain of wheat, has only a single seed-leaf; whereas This arum, for example, grows first the pea, as we all know, has two. This from a small hard seed with a single is the most fundamental difference lobe or seed-leaf. In the seed there is among flowering plants, as it points a little store of starch and albumen laid back to an early and deep-seated mode up by the mother-plant, on which the of growth, about which they must have young arum feeds, just as truly as the split off from one another millions of growing chick feeds on the white years ago. All the one-lobed plants which surrounds its native yolk, or as grow with stems like grasses or bamyou and I feed on the similar starches boos, formed by single leaves inclosing and albumens laid by for the use of the another; all the double lobed plants young plant in the grain of wheat, or for grow with stems like an oak, formed of the young fowl in the egg. Full-grown concentric layers from within outward. plants live by taking in food-stuffs from As soon as the arum, with its sproutthe air under the influence of sunlight; ing head, has raised its first leaves far but a young seedling can no more feed enough above the ground to reach the itself than a human baby can; and so sunlight, it begins to form fresh starches food is stored up for it beforehand by and new leaves for itself, and ceases to the parent stock. As the kernel swells be dependent upon the store laid up in with heat and moisture, its starches and its buried lobe. Most seeds accordingalbumens get oxidized and produce the ly contain just enough material to supmotions and rearrangements of particles port the young seedling till it is in a that result in the growth of a new plant. position to shift for itself; and this, First a little head rises toward the sun-of course, varies greatly with the habits light and a little root pushes downward and manners of the particular species. toward the moist soil beneath. The Some plants, too, such as the potato, business of the root is to collect water find their seeds insufficient to keep up for the circulating medium-the sap or the race by themselves, and so lay by blood of the plant-as well as a few abundant starches in underground mineral matters required for its stem branches or tubers, for the use of new and cells; but the business of the head shoots; and these rich starch receptais to spread out into leaves, which are cles we ourselves generally utilize as the real mouths and stomachs of the food-stuffs, to the manifest detriment bore them. But the tuber has a further protection against enemies besides its deep underground position. It contains an acrid juice like that of the leaves, which sufficiently guards it against four-footed depredators. Man, however, that most persistent of persecutors, has found out a way to separate the juice from the starch; and in St. Helena the big white arum is cultivated as a food-plant, and yields the meal in common use among the inhabitants. of the young potato-plants, for whose benefit they were originally intended. Well, the arum has no such valuable reserve as that; it is early cast upon its own resources, and so it shifts for itself with resolution. Its big, glossy leaves grow apace, and soon fill out, not only with green chlorophyl, but also with a sharp and pungent essence which makes them burn the mouth like cayenne pepper. This acrid juice has been acquired by the plant as a defence against its enemies. Some early ancestor of the arums must have been liable to constant When the arum has laid by enough attacks from rabbits, goats, or other starch to make a flower it begins to send herbivorous animals, and it has adopt-up a tall stalk, on the top of which ed this means of repelling their ad grows the curious hooded blossom vances. In other words, those arums known to be one of the earliest forms which were most palatable to the rab- still surviving upon earth. But now its bits got eaten up and destroyed, while object is to attract, not to repel, the those which were nastiest survived, and animal world; for it is an insect-fertilhanded down their pungency to future ized flower, and it requires the aid of generations. Just in the same way net-small flies to carry the pollen from blostles have acquired their sting and this- som to blossom. For this purpose it tles their prickles, which efficiently pro- has a purple sheath around its head of tect them against all herbivores, except the patient, hungry donkey, who gratefully accepts them as a sort of sauce piquante to the succulent stems. And now the arum begins its great preparations for the act of flowering. Everybody knows the general shape of the arum blossom-if not in our own purple cuckoo-pint, at least in the big white "Ethiopian lilies" which form such frequent ornaments of cottage windows. Clearly, this is a flower which the plant cannot produce without laying up a good stock of material beforehand. So its sets to work accumulating starch in its root. This starch it manufactures in its leaves, and then buries deep under ground in a tuber, by means of the sap, so as to secure it from the attacks of rodents, who too frequently appropriate to themselves the food intended by plants for other If you examine the tuber purposes. before the arum has blossomed, you will find it large and solid; but if you dig it up in the autumn after the seeds have ripened, you will see that it is flaccid and drained; all its starches and other contents have gone to make up the flower, the fruit, and the stalk which flowers and a tall spike on which they Here second dose of pollen, which they carry | England is too warm and sickly for away in turn to a third blossom. their robust tastes, and they can only As soon as the pistils have been im- be found here in a few bleak spots like pregnated, the fruits begin to set. Here the stony edges of this weather-beaten they are, on their tall spike, whose in- down above the chine. The fruit itself closing sheath has now withered away, is quite as good as the garden variety, while the top is at this moment slowly for cultivation has added little to the dwindling, so that only the cluster of native virtues of the raspberry. Good berries at its base will finally remain. old Izaac Walton is not ashamed to The berries will swell and grow soft, till quote a certain quaint saying of one Dr. in autumn they become a beautiful scar- Boteler concerning strawberries, and so let cluster of living coral. Then once I suppose I need not be afraid to quote more their object will be to attract the it after him. "Doubtless," said the animal world, this time in the shape of Doctor, "God could have made a betfield-mice, squirrels, and small birds; ter berry, but doubtless also God never but with a more treacherous intent. did." Nevertheless, if you try the For though the berries are beautiful raspberry, picked fresh, with plenty of and palatable enough they are deadly good country cream, you must allow poison. The robins or small rodents that it runs its sister fruit a neck-andwhich eat them, attracted by their neck race. bright colors and pleasant taste, not only aid in dispersing them, but also die after swallowing them, and become huge manure heaps for the growth of the young plant. So the whole cycle of arum existence begins afresh, and there is hardly a plant in the field around me which has not a history as strange as this one. IX. BERRIES AND BERRIES. But To compare the structure of a raspberry with that of a strawberry is a very instructive botanical study. It shows how similar causes may produce the same gross result in singularly different ways. Both are roses by family, and both have flowers essentially similar to that of the common dog-rose. even in plants where the flowers are alike, the fruits often differ conspicuously, because fresh principles come into play for the dispersion and safe germination of the seed. This makes the THIS little chine, opening toward the study of fruits the most complicated sea through the blue lias cliffs, has been part in the unravelling of plant life. worn to its present pretty gorge-like After the strawberry has blossomed, the depth by the slow action of its tiny pulpy receptacle on which it bore its stream—a mere thread of water in fine green fruitlets begins to swell and redweather, that trickles down its centre den, till at length it grows into an ediin a series of mossy cascades to the ble berry, dotted with little yellow shingly beach below. Its sides are nuts, containing each a single seed. overgrown by brambles and other prick- But in the raspberry it is the separate ly brushwood, which form in places a fruitlets themselves which grow soft and matted and impenetrable mass; for it bright-colored, while the receptacle reis the habit of all plants protected by mains white and tasteless, forming the the defensive armor of spines or thorns" “hull" which we pull off from the to cluster together in serried ranks, berry when we are going to eat it. through which cattle or other intrusive Thus the part of the raspberry which animals cannot break. Among them, we throw away answers to the part of near the down above, I have just light- the strawberry which we eat. Only, in ed upon a rare plant for Southern the raspberry the separate fruitlets are Britain-a wild raspberry-bush in full all crowded close together into a single fruit. Raspberries are common enough united mass, while in the strawberry in Scotland among heaps of stones on they are scattered about loosely, and the windiest hillsides; but the south of imbedded in the soft flesh of the re |