The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 66, April, 1863

The fellow tried them on and pronounced them a complete fit, and went on his way rejoicing. The clerk was amused, half an hour after, to see the old gentleman searching for his shoes and wondering what had become of them. He was reminded that he had given them to the beggar. On further inquiry, he found that he had no other pair in the house.

The following significant story was told me by the son of the old man. I present it in nearly his own words.

"Adjoining me in the country lives an old German who nearly seventy years ago was sold in New York for his passage. A confectioner of Baltimore bought him for seven years' service, and he went with his master to fulfil his obligation. When his time was out, he turned his face towards the setting sun, and started to seek his fortune. On arriving in Pittsburg, having no money, he engaged to 'work his way' down the river on a flat-boat. He stopped at the little village, as our city then was, and opened a shop. He was skilful, and succeeded. He came to my father, and bought, on ten years' credit, a place in the country, where, in course of time, he built a house, and, with my father's assistance, planted a vineyard. He then gave up all other business but that of the vine-dresser.

"One day, in the autumn, a few years ago, I overtook the old man on horseback, on his way to town. After wishing me a cheery good-morning, he said,—

"'I am on my way to town, to sell your father my wine.'

"'He will be glad to get it; he is buying wine, and yours is made so carefully that he will be glad to have it.'

"'I mean to sell it to him for fifty cents a gallon.'

"'Oh,' said I, 'don't offer it at that. I know he is paying double that sum.'

"'Nevertheless, I mean to sell it to him for half a dollar.'

"I looked inquiringly.

"'Well, Sir, I was but a boy when I left Germany; but I was old enough to remember that a man, after a hard day's work, could go to a wine-house, and for two cents could get a tumblerful. It did him good, and he went home to his family fresher and brighter for his wine. He was never drunk, and never wasted his earnings to appease a diseased appetite. I want to see that state of things brought about here. Our poor people drink whiskey. I want them to have cheap wine in its place. Fifty cents a gallon will pay me well this year for my capital and labor, and next year I think I can sell it for forty cents.'

"'But, my friend, see how this will work. You will sell your wine to Mr. – for fifty cents; and he will send it to his wine-cellar, and they will bottle it and sell it for all they can get.'

"'That's their lookout,' said the Teuton; 'I shall have done my duty.'

"It was rather hard to get an advantage of my father, but I thought now I had him. On reaching the city, I sought him out, and told the story with all its circumstances.

"'Now, Sir, in presence of the example of this old German,—sold in New York for his passage, faithfully fulfilling the years of his servitude, working his way to a small competency by savings and industry,—will you dare to let the world hear of you, a rich man, making a profit on wine?'

"The old man's eye dropped an instant, then he said,—

"'My son, Heaven knows I do not wish to make money out of wine. I have given much time and much money for the last fifty years to make this doubtful experiment successful. I have paid high prices for wine, and used all other means in my power to make it remunerative,—to induce others to plant vineyards. If I should now take your suggestion and bring wine down to a low price, I should ruin the enterprise. But let the extended cultivation of the grape be once firmly established, and then competition will bring it low enough.'

"'Well,' said I, 'that may be good worldly wisdom; but I like the spirit of the old Dutchman better, after all.'

"'There I agree with you; for once, you are right.'"

A most careful accountant has shown that his contributions to grape-culture amounted to one-fourth of his whole fortune: a clear loss to him, but not to the public.

Though the lips of Christendom repeat, Sunday after Sunday, the warning that the left hand should not know what the right hand doeth, yet it is very apt to judge of a man's liberality by the paragraphs concerning him in the newspapers. The old gentleman once gave his city several acres of land for an observatory which was to be erected; and there is no doubt that he had reason to conclude, as have others, that it was the worst, as it was the most public, charity of his life. That his private charities were numerous and without self-crediting, the present writer happens to know. Once, after going through the great wine-cellar where millions were coined, I went through the barracks in the upper portion of the same building, where a wretched tenantry of the Devil's poor lived in squalor. Each of these families was required to pay room-rent to the millionnaire. As I passed along, I found one man and woman in wrathful distress. They must pay their rent, or be turned out of their rooms. The rent was two or three dollars. I said,—

"The old gentleman will not turn you out."

"You do not know him; he will be sure to, if we do not pay him every cent."

I determined to search him out and represent the case. I could not find him; but before I concluded my search, I found that the poor people had been compelled to sell a table and some chairs to pay the rent. The next day I saw them again, and found them heartily abusing the old man as "a stingy brute," who would "sell the chairs from under them." Yet I observed that they had a new table and three new chairs. When I asked them how they came by them, they said they had been sent by an unknown hand, which they supposed to be mine. A thought struck me, and after some trouble I ferreted out the fact, that, although the rich old man had, for reasons connected with the good order of the barracks, always exacted every cent of the rent from each tenant, whatever the consequences, he had many times, as in this case, secretly returned more than it had cost them to pay it. They were left to believe him a hard man, and often attributed his benefits to societies and persons whose charity would have been stifled by the whiskey-stench of their rooms.

Thus, then, went on his life, until the day when the Golden Wedding was to be celebrated. That year, the sons, with the vine-dressers, the bottlers, corkers, and all, gathered together and said,—

"Come, now! let us this year make a wine that shall be like the nectar for a true man's soul!"

So, with one accord, they gathered the richest grapes, and selected from them; then they made the wine-press clean and sweet, and cast the grapes therein. One great hiss,—a spurt of gold flushed with rubies,—and all that is acrid is left, all that is rich and sweet is borne away, to be labelled "GOLDEN WEDDING."

And now, as I taste it, it seems to me flavored beyond all earthly wine, as if it were the expression of an humble and faithful man, who had a legitimate object, which he obtained by steadfastness. The wine-makers maintain, that wine, though long confined in bottles, sympathizes still with the vines from which it was pressed; and when the season of the flowering of vines comes, it is always agitated anew. Surely the Catawba must ever sparkle afresh, when in it, as now, we pledge the memory of the brave and wise pioneer whose life climbed to its maturity along with the purple clusters which so had garnered the frost and sunshine of a life as well as of the seasons.

THE SILURIAN BEACH

With what interest do we look upon any relic of early human history! The monument 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 buried 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 reverential touch the yellow parchment-roll whose dim, defaced characters record the meagre learning of a buried nationality; and the announcement, that for centuries the tropical forests of Central America have hidden within their tangled 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 plants were created when the thought of God first expressed itself in organic forms, to hold in one's hand a bit of stone from an old sea-beach, hardened into rock thousands of centuries ago, and studded with the beings that once crept upon its surface or were stranded there by some retreating wave, is even of deeper interest to men than the relics of their own race, for these things tell more directly of the thoughts and creative acts of God.

Standing in the neighborhood of Whitehall, near Lake George, one may look along such a sea-shore, and see it stretching westward and sloping gently southward as far as the eye can reach. It must have had a very gradual slope, and the waters must have been very shallow; for at that time no great mountains had been uplifted, and deep oceans are always the concomitants of lofty heights. We do not, however, judge of this by inference merely; we have an evidence of the shallowness of the sea in those days in the character of the shells found in the Silurian deposits, which shows that they belonged in shoal waters.

Indeed, the fossil remains of all times tell us almost as much of the physical condition of the world at different epochs as they do of its animal and vegetable population. When Robinson Crusoe first caught sight of the footprint on the sand, he saw in it more than the mere footprint, for it spoke to him of the presence of men on his desert island. We walk on the old geological shores, like Crusoe along his beach, and the footprints we find there tell us, too, more than we actually see in them. The crust of our earth is a great cemetery where the rocks are tombstones on which the buried dead have written their own epitaphs. They tell us not only who they were and when and where they lived, but much also of the circumstances under which they lived. We ascertain the prevalence of certain physical conditions at special epochs by the presence of animals and plants whose existence and maintenance required such a state of things, more than by any positive knowledge respecting it. Where we find the remains of quadrupeds corresponding to our ruminating animals, we infer not only land, but grassy meadows also, and an extensive vegetation; where we find none but marine animals, we know the ocean must have covered the earth; the remains of large reptiles, representing, though in gigantic size, the half aquatic, half terrestrial reptiles of our own period, indicate to us the existence of spreading marshes still soaked by the retreating waters; while the traces of such animals as live now in sand and shoal waters, or in mud, speak to us of shelving sandy beaches and of mud-flats. The eye of the Trilobite tells us that the sun shone on the old beach where he lived; for there is nothing in Nature without a purpose, and when so complicated an organ was made to receive the light, there must have been light to enter it. The immense vegetable deposits in the Carboniferous period announce the introduction of an extensive terrestrial vegetation; and the impressions left by the wood and leaves of the trees show that these first forests must have grown in a damp soil and a moist atmosphere. In short, all the remains of animals and plants hidden in the rocks have something to tell of the climatic conditions and the general circumstances under which they lived, and the study of fossils is to the naturalist a thermometer by which he reads the variations of temperature in past times, a plummet by which he sounds the depths of the ancient oceans,—a register, in fact, of all the important physical changes the earth has undergone.

But although the animals of the early geological deposits indicate shallow seas by their similarity to our shoal-water animals, it must not be supposed that they are by any means the same. On the contrary, the old shells, crustacea, corals, etc., represent types which have existed in all times with the same essential structural elements, but under different specific forms in the several geological periods. And here it may not be amiss to say something of what are called by naturalists representative types.

The statement that different sets of animals and plants have characterized the successive epochs is often understood as indicating a difference of another kind than that which distinguishes animals now living in different parts of the world. This is a mistake. There are so-called representative types all over the globe, united to each other by structural relations and separated by specific differences of the same kind as those that unite and separate animals of different geological periods. Take, for instance, mud-flats or sandy shores in the same latitudes of Europe and America; we find living on each animals of the same structural character and of the same general appearance, but with certain specific differences, as of color, size, external appendages, etc. They represent each other on the two continents. The American wolves, foxes, bears, rabbits, are not the same as the European, but those of one continent are as true to their respective types as those of the other; under a somewhat different aspect they represent the same groups of animals. In certain latitudes, or under conditions of nearer proximity, these differences may be less marked. It is well known that there is a great monotony of type, not only among animals and plants, but in the human races also, throughout the Arctic regions; and the animals characteristic of the high North reappear under such identical forms in the neighborhood of the snow-fields in lofty mountains, that to trace the difference between the ptarmigans, rabbits, and other gnawing animals of the Alps, for instance, and those of the Arctics, is among the most difficult problems of modern science.

And so is it also with the animated world of past ages; in similar deposits of sand, mud, or lime, in adjoining regions of the same geological age, identical remains of animals and plants may be found, while at greater distances, but under similar circumstances, representative species may occur. In very remote regions, however, whether the circumstances be similar or dissimilar, the general aspect of the organic world differs greatly, remoteness in space being thus in some measure an indication of the degree of affinity between different faunae. In deposits of different geological periods immediately following each other we sometimes find remains of animals and plants so closely allied to those of earlier or later periods that at first sight the specific differences are hardly discernible. The difficulty of solving these questions, and of appreciating correctly the differences and similarities between such closely allied organisms, explains the antagonistic views of many naturalists respecting the range of existence of animals, during longer or shorter geological periods; and the superficial way in which discussions concerning the transition of species are carried on is mainly owing to an ignorance of the conditions above alluded to. My own personal observation and experience in these matters have led me to the conviction that every geological period has had its own representatives, and that no single species has been repeated in successive ages.

The laws regulating the geographical distribution of animals and their combination into distinct or zoological provinces called faunae with definite limits are very imperfectly understood as yet; but so closely are all things linked together from the beginning till to-day that I am convinced we shall never find the clue to their meaning till we carry on our investigations in the past and the present simultaneously. The same principle according to which animal and vegetable life is distributed over the surface of the earth now prevailed in the earliest geological periods. The geological deposits of all times have had their characteristic faunae under various zones, their zoological provinces presenting special combinations of animal and vegetable life over certain regions, and their representative types reproducing in different countries, but under similar latitudes, the same groups with specific differences.

Of course, the nearer we approach the beginning of organic life, the less marked do we find the differences to be, and for a very obvious reason. The inequalities of the earth's surface, her mountain-barriers protecting whole continents from the Arctic winds, her open plains exposing others to the full force of the polar blasts, her snug valleys and her lofty heights, her table-lands and rolling prairies, her river-systems and her dry deserts, her cold ocean-currents pouring down from the high North on some of her shores, while warm ones from tropical seas carry their softer influence to others,—in short, all the contrasts in the external configuration of the globe, with the physical conditions attendant upon them, are naturally accompanied by a corresponding variety in animal and vegetable life.

But in the Silurian age, when there were no elevations higher than the Canadian hills, when water covered the face of the earth with the exception of a few isolated portions lifted above the almost universal ocean, how monotonous must have been the conditions of life! And what should we expect to find on those first shores? If we are walking on a sea-beach to-day, we do not look for animals that haunt the forests or roam over the open plains, or for those that live in sheltered valleys or in inland regions or on mountain-heights. We look for Shells, for Mussels and Barnacles, for Crabs, for Shrimps, for Marine Worms, for Star-Fishes and Sea-Urchins, and we may find here and there a fish stranded on the sand or tangled in the sea-weed. Let us remember, then, that, in the Silurian period, the world, so far as it was raised above the ocean, was a beach, and let us seek there for such creatures as God has made to live on sea-shores, and not belittle the Creative work, or say that He first scattered the seeds of life in meagre or stinted measure, because we do not find air-breathing animals when there was no fitting atmosphere to feed their lungs, insects with no terrestrial plants to live upon, reptiles without marshes, birds without trees, cattle without grass, all things, in short, without the essential conditions for their existence.

What we do find—and these, as I shall endeavor to show my readers, in such profusion that it would seem as if God, in the joy of creation, had compensated Himself for a less variety of forms in the greater richness of the early types—is an immense number of beings belonging to the four primary divisions of the Animal Kingdom, but only to those classes whose representatives are marine, whose home then, as now, was either in the sea or along its shores. In other words, the first organic creation expressed in its totality the structural conception since carried out in such wonderful variety of details, and purposely limited then, because the world, which was to be the home of the higher animals, was not yet made ready to receive them.

I am fully aware that the intimate relations between the organic and physical world are interpreted by many as indicating the absence, rather than the presence, of an intelligent Creator. They argue, that the dependence of animals on material laws gives us the clue to their origin as well as to their maintenance. Were this influence as absolute and unvarying as the purely mechanical action of physical circumstances must necessarily be, this inference might have some pretence to logical probability,—though it seems to me unnecessary, under any circumstances, to resort to climatic influences or the action of any physical laws to explain the thoughtful distribution of the organic and inorganic world, so evidently intended to secure for all beings what best suits their nature and their needs. But the truth is, that, while these harmonious relations underlie the whole creation in such a manner as to indicate a great central plan, of which all things are a part, there is at the same time a freedom, an arbitrary element in the mode of carrying it out, which seems to point to the exercise of an individual will; for, side by side with facts, apparently the direct result of physical laws, are other facts, the nature of which shows a complete independence of external influences.

Take, for instance, the similarity above alluded to between the fauna of the Arctics and that of the Alps, certainly showing a direct relation between climatic conditions and animal and vegetable life. Yet even there, where the shades of specific difference between many animals and plants of the same class are so slight as to battle the keenest investigators, we have representative types both in the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms as distinct and peculiar as those of widely removed and strongly contrasted climatic conditions. Shall we attribute the similarities and the differences alike to physical causes? Compare, for example, the Reindeer of the Arctics with the Ibex and the Chamois, representing the same group in the Alps. Even on mountain-heights of similar altitudes, where not only climate, but other physical conditions would suggest a recurrence of identical animals, we do not find the same, but representative types. The Ibex of the Alps differs, for instance, from that of the Pyrenees, that of the Pyrenees from those of the Caucasus and Himalayas, these again from each other and from that of the Altai.

But perhaps the most conclusive proof that we must seek for the origin of organic life outside of physical causes consists in the permanence of the fundamental types, while the species representing these types have differed in every geological period. Now what we call typical features of structure are in themselves no more stable or permanent than specific features. If physical causes, such as light, heat, moisture, food, habits of life, etc., acting upon individuals, have gradually in successive generations changed the character of the species to which they belong, why not that of the class and the branch also? If we judge this question from the material side at all, we must, in order to judge it fairly, look at it wholly from that point of view. If these specific changes are brought about in this way, it is because external causes have positive permanent effects upon the substances of which animals are built: they have power to change their hair, to change their skin, to change certain external appendages or ornamentations, and any other of those ultimate features which naturalists call specific characters. Now I would ask what there is in the substances out of which class characters are built that would make them less susceptible to such external influences than these specific characters. In many instances the former are more delicate, more sensitive, far more fragile and transient in their material nature than the latter. And yet never, in all the chances and changes of time, have we seen any alteration in the mode of respiration, of reproduction, of circulation, or in any of the systems of organs which characterize the more comprehensive groups of the Animal Kingdom, although they are quite as much under the immediate influence of physical causes as those structural features which have been constantly changing.

The woody fibre of the Pine-trees has had the same structure from the Carboniferous age to this day, while their mode of branching and the forms of their cones and leaves have been different in each period according to their respective species. The combination of rings, the structure of the wings, and the articulations of the legs are the same in the Cockroaches of the Carboniferous age as in those which infest our ships and our dwellings to-day, while the proportion of their parts is on quite another scale. The tissue of the Corals in the Silurian age is identical in chemical combination and organic structure with that of the Corals of our modern reefs, and yet the extensive researches upon this class for which we are indebted to Milne Edwards and Haime have not revealed a single species extending through successive geological ages, but show us, on the contrary, that every age has had its own kinds, differing among themselves in the same way as those of the Gulf of Mexico differ now from those of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. The scales of the oldest known fishes in the Silurian beds have the same microscopic structure as those of their representative types today, and yet I have never seen a single fossil fish presenting the same specific characters in the successive geological epochs. The teeth of the oldest Sharks show the same microscopic structure as those of the present time, and we do not lack opportunities for comparison, since the former are as common in the mountain-limestone of Ireland as are those of the living Sharks on any beach where our fishermen boil them for the sake of their oil, and yet the Sharks appear under different generic and specific forms in each geological age.

But without multiplying examples, which might be adduced ad infinitum, to show permanence of type combined with repeated changes of species, suffice it to say, that, while the general features in the framework of the organic world and the materials of which that framework is built, though quite as subject to the influence of physical external circumstances as any so-called specific-features, have remained perfectly intact from the beginning of Creation till now, so that not the smallest difference is to be discerned in these respects between the oldest representatives of the oldest types in the oldest Silurian rocks and their successors through all the geological ages up to the present day, the species have been different in each epoch. It is surely a fair question to ask the advocates of the transmutation theory, whether they attribute to physical laws the discernment that would lead them to change the specific features, but to respect all those characters by which the higher structural combinations of the Animal Kingdom are preserved without alteration,—in other words, to maintain the organic plan, while constantly diversifying the mode of expressing it. If so, it would perhaps be as well to call them by another name, since they show all the comprehensive wisdom of an intelligent Creator. Until they can tell us why certain features of animals and plants are permanent under conditions which, according to their view, have power to change certain other features no more perishable or transient in themselves, the supporters of the development theory will have failed to substantiate their peculiar scientific doctrine.

But this discussion has led us far away from our starting point, and interrupted our walk along the Silurian beach; let us return to gather a few specimens there, and compare them with the more familiar ones of our own shores. I have said that the beach was a shelving one, and covered of course with shoal waters; but as I have no desire to mislead my readers, or to present truths as generally accepted which are still subject to dispute, I would state here that the parallel ridges across the State of New York, considered by some geologists as the successive shores of a receding ocean, are believed by others to be the inequalities on the bottom of a shallow sea. Not only, however, does the general character of these successive terraces suggest the idea that they must have been shores, but the ripple-marks upon them are as distinct as upon any modern beach. The regular rise and fall of the water is registered there in waving, undulating lines as clearly as on the sand-beaches of Newport or Nahant; and we can see on any one of those ancient shores the track left by the waves as they rippled back at ebb of the tide thousands of centuries ago. One can often see where some obstacle interrupted the course of the water, causing it to break around it; and such an indentation even retains the soft, muddy, plastic look that we observe on the present beaches, where the resistance made by any pebble or shell to the retreating wave has given it greater force at that point, so that the sand around the spot is soaked and loosened. There is still another sign, equally familiar to those who have watched the action of water on a beach. Where a shore is very shelving and flat, so that the waves do not recede in ripples from it, but in one unbroken sheet, the sand and small pebbles are dragged and form lines which diverge whenever the water meets an obstacle, thus forming sharp angles on the sand. Such marks are as distinct on the oldest Silurian rocks as if they had been made yesterday. Nor are these the only indications of the same fact. There are certain animals living always upon sandy or muddy shores, which require for their well-being that the beach should be left dry a part of the day. These animals, moving about in the sand or mud from which the water has retreated, leave their tracks there; and if, at such a time, the wind is blowing dust over the beach, and the sun is hot enough to bake it upon the impressions so formed, they are left in a kind of mould. Such trails and furrows, made by small Shells or Crustacea, are also found in plenty on the oldest deposits.

Admitting it, then, to be a beach, let us begin with the lowest type of the Animal Kingdom, and see what Radiates are to be found there. There are plenty of Corals, but they are not the same kinds of Corals as those that build up our reefs and islands now. The modern Coral animals are chiefly Polyps, but the prevailing Corals of the Silurian age were Acalephian Hydroids, animals which indeed resemble Polyps in certain external features, and have been mistaken for them, but which are nevertheless Acalephs by their internal structure; for, instead of having the vertical partitions dividing the body into chambers, so characteristic of the Polyps, they are divided by tubes corresponding to the radiating tubes of the Acalephs proper, these tubes being themselves divided at regular distances by horizontal floors, so that they never run uninterruptedly from top to bottom of the body. I subjoin a woodcut of a Silurian Coral, which does not, however, show the peculiar internal structure, but gives some idea of the general appearance of the old Hydroid Corals. We have but one Acalephian Coral now living, the Millepore; and it was by comparing that with these ancient ones that I first detected their relation to the Acalephs. For the true Acalephs or Jelly-Fishes we shall look in vain; but the presence of the Acalephian Corals establishes the existence of the type, and we cannot expect to find those kinds preserved which are wholly destitute of hard parts. I do not attempt any description of the Polyps proper, because the early Corals of that class are comparatively few, and do not present features sufficiently characteristic to attract the notice of the casual observer.

Of the Echinoderms, the class of Radiates represented now by our Star-Fishes and Sea-Urchins, we may gather any quantity, though the old fashioned forms are very different from the living ones. I have dwelt at such length in a former article[8 - See Methods of Study in Natural History, Atlantic Monthly, No. LVII., July, 1862.] on the wonderful beauty and variety of the Crinoids, or "Stone Lilies," as they have been called, from their resemblance to flowers, that I will only briefly allude to them here. The subjoined wood-cut represents one with a closed cup; but the number of their different patterns is hardly to be counted, and I would invite any one who questions the abundant expression of life in those days to look at some slabs of ancient limestone in the Zoölogical Museum at Cambridge, where the stems of the Crinoids are tangled together as thickly as sea-weed on the shore. Indeed, some of our rock-deposits consist chiefly of the fragments of their remains.

The Mollusks were also represented then, as now, by their three classes,—Acephala, Gasteropoda, and Cephalopoda. The Acephala or Bivalves we shall find in great numbers, but of a very different pattern from the Oysters, Clams, and Mussels of recent times. The annexed wood-cut represents one of these Brachiopods, which form a very characteristic type of the Silurian deposits. The square cut of the upper edge, where the two valves meet along the back and are united by a hinge, is altogether old-fashioned, and unknown among our modern Bivalves. The wood-cut does not show the inequality of the two valves, also a very characteristic feature of this group,—one valve being flat and fitting closely into the other, which is more spreading and much fuller. These, also, were represented by a great variety of species, and we find them crowded together as closely in the ancient rocks as Oysters or Clams or Mussels on any of our modern shores. Besides these, there were the Bryozoa, a small kind of Mollusk allied to the Clams, and very busy then in the ancient Coral work. They grew in communities, and the separate individuals are so minute that a Bryozoan stock looks like some delicate moss. They still have their place among the Reef-Building Corals, but play an insignificant part in comparison with that of their predecessors.

Of the Silurian Univalves or Gasteropods there is not much to tell, for their spiral shells were so brittle that scarcely any perfect specimens are known, though their broken remains are found in such quantities as to show that this class also was very fully represented in the earliest creation. But the highest class of Mollusks, the Cephalopods or Chambered Shells, or Cuttle-Fishes, as they are called when the animal is unprotected by a shell, are, on the contrary, very well preserved, and they are very numerous. Of these I will speak somewhat more in detail, because their geological history is a very curious one.