rocks of Trias age, thus gradually accumulated in the marshy wastes, were embedded the bones of the first mammal which is known to have existed on the earth, the fossil remains possessing the characters of the surviving marsupials of Australia. Ripple marks preserved in some of the hardened sands of the Trias strata prove the existence in those periods, incalculably remote, of tidal action; every day you may see the same ridge and furrow produced by the ebb of the tide in the lower estuary of the Severn. In the Trias flagstones also are found the impressions caused by the feet of birds and quadrupeds, even as the imprints are left to-day on the sand or mud of the seashore.

The Trias stones of the cathedral simply tell of an epoch when the heart of England was a series of saline lagoons and islets more or less in connection with a tidal ocean, with a flora and fauna widely divergent from those of our present temperate zone, but linked to them by innumerable gradations in successive epochs-necessarily imperfect in the lapse of ages, but sufficiently clear to teach us that life comes only from life, since the remote period when incipient matter was first endowed with animation by the Giver of all life. The fossil plants from strata associated with the quarries from which the cathedral stones are derived indicate a semi-tropical climate, where the shallow waters of the inland lagoons slowly evaporated beneath a torrid sun; where wingless, or nearly wingless, birds, such as the New Zealand apteryx, the wood-hen of Lord Howe's Island, or the emu of the antipodean plains, flourished by reed-clad shores; and where marsupial animals bounded across the arid wastes of sand. The deposits of solid rock salt in both the Cheshire and Worcestershire marls are the product of this epoch, whilst the same process can be studied amid the plains of Central Asia or in the diminishing lake system of South Australia. Indeed, it is in the Trias period that we find the commencement of the typical flora and fauna which slowly develop through the Purbeck ages of geologists into the geological and botanical horizon now prevailing in certain portions of the Australian island continent.

Within the portals of the cathedral we may discover another link in the chain of development. Let us proceed direct to the Gothic choir, which is so thoroughly expressive of a devotional spirit, and so perfect in every detail, that it might well be compared with the far-famed "Angel Choir" of Lincoln Minster, the finest in the land. A good deal of the elegance displayed at Worcester is derived from the free use of the Purbeck shafts throughout, a material which the early English architects employed to advantage

in most of our cathedrals and abbey churches. The blue-grey of the polished surfaces lends an agreeable contrast to the carved stone work; the sombre marble, together with the foliated capitals and richly carved bosses, give sufficient decoration without additional colour being applied to the stone. Effective as they are for architectural purposes, there is something more in connection with these slender columns which suggest material for deep reflection, even if it be not on lines precisely ecclesiastical. An examination of a single shaft at once shows many sections of fossil shells belonging rather to a series of land testacea than to marine genera of mollusca. There are fragments of Paludinæ, Planorbi, and Limnæa, often enough exhibiting the internal divisions or segment walls of the different shells. If I might take a hammer to chip the marble pillar, I could obtain a whole collection of shells, with the remains of microscopic Cypridæ always found in the upper Purbeck rocks. At Swanage or Lulworth, in Dorset, the strata may be studied in situ.

These freshwater limestones constitute the upper series of the Oolitic system, rocks relatively newer than the Trias strata. The Purbeck shafts in Worcester Cathedral are, consequently, almost as old as the Cotswold hills. The abundance of fossil remains in corresponding beds prove very clearly that a semi-tropical climate existed in England at the period, as in the Trias days; the vegetation and terrestrial fauna have also a most curious affinity with that of Australia. In the Trias period we found evidences of the dawn of the marsupial era in the paleontological remains, such as Microlestes antiquus. Now, in the Oolitic epoch this becomes the typical order, some twenty-five genera of marsupials having been discovered in the middle Purbeck rocks, embedded together with the remains of tropical plants. All the animals of that age had the progression of the kangaroo, and apparently carried the young in the characteristic pouch, and they lived amid cycadaceous plants, palms, araucarias; great tree ferns flourished then, as they now do in Australia. Standing in the recesses of one of those glorious gullies in the great mountain range of New South Wales, we might actually imagine ourselves thrown suddenly back into the remote Purbeck days. The rock wallaby bounding through the scrub; the strange proteaceous plants and luxuriant tree ferns are all links of the great Secondary age. Mr, Wallace has shown us how this vast island continent has been severed by a deep sea channel from the Asian archipelago and main ever since the Secondary period. Progress has been arrested, so to speak, in Australia, where, with the

single exception of the opossum, the marsupial order-once predominant-alone survives. Standing by moonlight amongst the weird white gum trees, I have watched a queer bat hanging head downwards from the boughs, the piercing dark eyes gleaming in the half light from the sharp-featured face. It was but a harmless flying fox, yet suggestive enough of some blood-sucking vampire or winged reptile of pterodactyle kind, whose fossil bones had risen again in the flesh. What an old-world creature, again, is the duck-billed platypus, gliding silently into some flowing stream. In this anomalous animal Nature has surely been trying her hand at halfa-dozen orders in one. The flat bill is that of a bird, the fur is that of a burrowing mole, the feet and poison glands are reptilian in character. Although the creature lays eggs, the young are suckled after the manner of marsupial mammals. The shells in the brackish lakes are allied to those embedded in the Purbeck limestones, and the primate fronds of the living Macrozamia are almost identical with cone-bearing cycads of Oolitic times. Amongst the fishes of North Australia lingers the Ceratodus, the survival of ancient orders with the primitive structure of the Devonian period Everything we see is the survival of an ancient fauna and flora, amid which mankind seems out of place. There is a slab of stone in the Chapel of Prince Arthur, at Worcester, which speaks eloquently of these past ages.

Supporting the canopies of the arcade, dividing the choir from the north aisle, the slender columns are of polished Carboniferous limestone, either from the Derbyshire or North Wales hills, Primary rocks dating from the formation of the Coal-measures. This stone, or marble I ought rather to call it (any limestone which takes a high polish is called marble), is crowded with an extraordinary wealth of organic remains, such as now exist in the depths of the far-off Pacific Ocean of another hemisphere; these clear waters and torrid climes favour the growth of corals at suitable depths: encrinites, polyzoa, and a wealth of marine life luxuriate. On the shores of Ceylon, for example, the clear tidal pools teem with an exuberance of life, even as did the Carboniferous and Wenlock seas, in which the fossils of the polished limestones had their origin. A glimpse into one of those rocky pools on the shores of the Indian Ocean surely affords us a picture of what the Carboniferous seas were like. I have gazed from some small promontory into a realm of brilliant colour, where bright aiga, madrepores of violet and green, corals and sponges, or crimson gorgonia are mingled in lavish profusion. Jewelled fishes flash in and out like fire opals, and spiny echinoderms revel in the transVOL. CCLXXIII. NO. 1941.

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lucent seas. The remains are to be seen in the marble slabs, although the intense colours and living forms have passed away. The dried or fossilised skeleton of a sponge is not an object of transcendent beauty, but the living organism covered with gelatinous sarcode, supported on a network of needle-shaped spiculæ, with each tiny cell the home of a ciliated monad, and the whole mass, perhaps delicately tinted as from an Alpine glow, is a wondrous sight.

The cathedral stones, again, teach us that the prototypes of each organism lived and likewise flourished in the congenial temperature of the limestone seas. Attached to those ancient rocks something akin to the existing scarlet gorgonia spread its frond-like branchlets, each cell having its pink polyp and ciliated tentacles creating a ceaseless vortex, by means of which the food particles were attracted. The quiet pools had also their violet madrepores, aggregated colonies of animal life, and sea-green asteroid corals. Our purple and crimson echinodermata creeping on the ambulacral organs, with spinous spherical shells, are but modifications of pre-existing kinds, as the blue, orange, and red fish of the tropical seas, flashing in the intense light of an endless summer, are descendants of more ancient types. I have seen as strangely shaped crustacea from the Indian Ocean as any trilobite from Silurian rocks. At every turn the comparison is suggested between the past and present ages. Worcester Cathedral is a perpetual record of changing periods of tropical life-history presented in fragmentary pictures. "The thing that hath been is that which shall be." This is true enough in principle, but the evidence of every stone proves changing climatic conditions regulating the conditions of life in every form.

The capacious nave of the cathedral is paved with slabs of black and white marble, the product of Irish and Italian quarries respectively. The choir steps and portions of the screen are made from redtoned Devonshire marbles. In one of the north chapels is the monument to Lady Digby, one of Chantrey's famous works: the figure is sculptured from pure white statuary marble, from the Apennines. The material is composed of a hard crystalline form of carbonate of lime metamorphosed by intense heat from a softer substance. If a small fragment of chalk is crushed into powder the microscopic washings reveal numberless organisms of the foraminiferæ, of which pure chalk is almost entirely composed. The same carbonate of lime, in the form of chalk, has been actually transformed into statuary marble in the laboratory by the application of intense heat or pressure (almost convertible terms). Chalk and crystalline marble are but two forms of the same elements, although, in the latter case, organic

traces have been obliterated. Each square inch of Lady Digby's sculptured form represents so many millions of foraminifera which lived and had their being in the Cretaceous seas, and were deposited in the mud as the foundation of future rocks, in the same way that Globerigina ooze now accumulates in the bed of the Atlantic.

On the opposite side of the choir stands the beautiful chantry containing the tomb of Henry VII.'s son. The monk architects of old knew full well that there was no stone in the world so capable of retaining the fine edges of carving in ages to come as the Tertiary limestones-comparatively new in geological time-which they conveyed for the purpose from Caen, in Normandy, up the winding channel of the Severn. The paleontological records of these Tertiary rocks tell us that the older marsupial genera had gradually given place to mammals of a more advanced type, such as tapirs and the prototypes of the horse. Whilst surviving in Australia through these Tertiary periods, all the marsupialia, except the opossums, disappeared on the other continents. It is instructive to note en passant that the Pleistocene caverns in Australia contain the fossil remains of pouched lions, bears, and other animals.

Concerning the horse, the history that it tells is forcibly direct; the changes in course of development are too striking to be ignored. It is difficult, for example, to realise that the magnificent shire horse is specifically the same as a little Shetland pony. What the breeder has accomplished with domestic varieties, is but a faint adoption of the operation of great natural laws working through time to their appointed end. Thanks to Professor Marsh, the American geologist, and to the researches of others in Europe, it is now possible to trace the modern Equus through many transitions until we find the hoof of the species passing into a foot with divided toes; link by link it can be demonstrated by anatomists that the horse is descended from the Hipparion of Miocene age, and that, again, finds a common ancestry with other animals in the Palæotheridæ of Eocene epoch. (See footnote on next page.)

Threaded together, these fragments of history inscribed in the stones appear to me as so many links, imperfect as they necessarily are in the present state of our knowledge, in the grand scheme of organic evolution. Design in the universe implies a Designer. The succession of rocks in due order with their fossil contents proves definitely that climates alternated and seasons changed vast ages before Adam delved in Eden. Ice-bound regions have become torrid, tropics have changed to temperate zones, and temperate zones in turn been frozen; and so it will be while the earth rotates upon its