an excursion. Come. Ah, you have a cold.
Well, I will stop exactly half an hour." Here
he pulled out his watch. "I do want you
to share my enjoyment. I do want to make
you feel the delight caused by the study of
geology. I didn't think that I should take it
up myself when I turned out Jack's drawers.
Page over-persuaded me. He's just the man
to bring the science home to you. Ah, Mrs.
Boulder doesn't know it, but I've carried up
her spare sheets and blankets into one of the
attics, and have a most beautiful experiment
on the formation of mud-banks from aqueous
deposit in her linen chest. I've mixed up in
water earth and shells and a shilling's worth
of shrimps. In a few days, when I drain the
water off, you come over to me, and I'll show
you how the top crust of the world is formed,
and how the remains of extinct animals get
to be mixed with it. Only, if Mrs. B. should
by chance go to the chest before the experiment
is finished—O those women! those
women!

"But now, Smith, as you've a cold, and
can't go to the hills, I'll show you how a
geologist need go no farther than his own
room for a study of incomparably the most
glorious of sciences. I'll give you to-day only
an elementary lesson. When I come next
we'll go into the thing more completely. Now
look here,"—down came the hammer on a
corner of my mantelpiece,- " I break off this
little bit of metaniorphic rock; the character
has been destroyed by polishing, but now
what beauty have I not revealed."

"Boulder," I cried, "give me your hammer.
Let me send your hammer down into
the hall."

"Thank you, thank you—I shall be going
presently. "Tis not worth while. Dismiss
from your mind what I was just saying
about aqueous rocks. Above the igneous
you have the metamorphic—you have, to
speak familiarly, the mantel-piece upon the
paper weight, and not the paper weight upon
the mantel-piece."

"I have, have I?"

"To be sure you have. Heat and the
pressure of the superincumbent strata have
given to these metamorphic rocks their
crystalline appearance, though it is believed that
they were once deposited by water, and
contained fossils of which all trace has been
extinguished. Well then, Smith, on the top
of the metamorphic rocks, on the top of the
mantel-piece, we place Sir Roderick
Murchison."

"Can it be possible?"

"Yes, Murchison and the Silurian rocks
defined and discovered by him. They used
to be called, along with some others, the
Greywacke formation."

"O, indeed!"

"Yes. Here we have certain sandstones,
shales, limestones, flagstones, and the slates
near Bala. By Jove! Smith, you've a slate
top to that console table. If it should be
Silurian, you happy dog!—if it should be
Silurian!"

Up leaped my friend and up leaped I, but
not in time to save the chipping of a rather
costly bit of furniture.

"Boulder," I cried, hoarse with rage and
rheum together, "break another piece of
furniture, and we are enemies for ever!"

"Ah, my boy, you have your enthusiasm
yet to come. I'll promise to break nothing
of any value. But of what value are these
precious polished specimens of yours? Their
value's doubled when they show the
fracture and the cleavage and that sort of thing.
Nay, I'll break nothing more. Well, then,
above the Silurian you have the old red
sandstone, and then above that—ha! but it's
all fair to break coal—above that the coal."

A heavy lump of coal was suddenly
whipped out of the coal-scuttle, and being
hammered into fragments on the breakfast-
cloth before I could effectually interfere.

"It is most interesting to search coal for
the remains of extinct vegetable life. The
markings sometimes are of the most
beautiful description. The whole of yesterday I
spent in our coal-cellar and a more delightful
day I never——"

A loud knocking at the street-door startled
us. Mr. Boulder was picking carefully about
the contents of the coal-scuttle, and had
spread some choice bits on the rug for
further investigation, when a servant
appeared to report that Mrs. Boulder wished,
if Mr. B. was disengaged, to see him
instantly.

"Ah!" said my friend, laying another
coal upon the rug. "She has been to the
linen-press. Smith, go and pacify her."

A DAISY ON A GRAVE.

I SAW a churchyard, not that holy place
  Where the green turf lies o'er the quiet dead,
And the calm sunshine, like a holy smile,
  Falls through the green leaves quivering overhead ;
And loving memory comes there to grieve,
And tend new blossoms in the dewy eve;

But a rank graveyard, a neglected place
  Wall'd up by frowning houses, grim and bare,
With scarce a glimpse of sky,—where barren mounds
  Show'd many a human form lay mould'ring there.
And meagre gravestones, worn and crack'd with years,
Instead of tender blossoms dew'd with tears.

I paused beside a small and lowly grave;
  The narrow bed of childhood,—where there grew
One stunted daisy, small and wither'd up,
  That never saw the sun or drank the dew,
But drew unwholesome nurture with its breath:
The very air was redolent of death.

Thus tender Nature (who with common things
   So much of truth and beauty interweaves)
Had with a solemn meaning shadow' d out
  The little sleeper's history in its leaves.
More eloquent than words, a single glance
Took in its touching, mute significance.