ours. Many species of sharks abounded, some, as for instance, Carcharodon, being of immense size; for the teeth of the largest have been found six inches long, and five broad at the base. Turtles lived in these seas and bred there; for carapaces of all sizes, from the juvenile to the adult, are deposited in that part of the mass to which I belong, forming the Essex cliffs. As you are well aware, the turtles are now almost entirely confined to the tropical and subtropical districts.

You see, therefore, that I have abundant evidence for warranting me in my statement, that at the time I was born, a warm climate prevailed here. What it was before, I cannot say; but I know that even before the close of the Eocene period, this warmth had already decreased very considerably. You will, of course, remember that between the beginning and close of this period, there had elapsed time sufficiently long to enable more than two thousand feet of material to accumulate as strata. The changes which took place in the physical geography meantime were very great. I am speaking of a time when those high mountains, the Alps and Pyrenees, had not been elevated-nay, when the rocky material now forming a portion of their flanks was being deposited along the sea-floor!

In England and France, marine conditions had gradually given place to lacustrine, and large lakes had occupied the area previously covered by the sea. During the time that these changes were going on,

the climature was slowly toning down. The fossil vegetation met with very abundantly in strata of Upper Eocene age in Hampshire, show you this very plainly. Although it includes types now peculiar to warmer regions, it is not so plainly tropical. The succeeding age, the Miocene, bears out what I say, and from the period of my birth until the present, the register of the climature is very faithfully kept in the strata of the earth.

CHAPTER XII.

THE STORY OF A PIECE OF LIGNITE.

"Sweet was the scene! apart the cedars stood,
A sunny islet open'd in the wood

With vernal tints the wild-brier thicket grows,
For here the desert flourished as the rose;
From sapling trees with lucid foliage crown'd,
Gay lights and shadows twinkled on the ground;
Up the tall stems luxuriant creepers run
To hang their silver blossoms in the sun;
Deep velvet verdure clad the turf beneath,

Where trodden flowers their richest odours breathe;
O'er all, the bees with murmuring music flew
From bell to bell, to sip the treasured dew;
Whilst insect myriads, in their solar gleams,
Glanced to and fro, like intermingling beams;
So fresh, so pure, the woods, the sky, the air,
It seem'd a place where angels might repair,
And tune their harps beneath those tranquil shades,
To morning songs, or moonlight serenades."

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

ERSONALLY, I do not think I am such a familiar object, in England at least, as some of my fellow story-tellers. In some parts of Germany and Switzerland, and even in Devonshire, I am much better known under the name of "brown coal." The name I have assumed at the head of this story indicates, although under a Latin form, my vegetable origin.