Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/293

Rh artful spider. The web proper is gone, the spider can not be found, but there is the story all told inside of half an inch's space. Farther on are the feathers of a bird, evidently a sparrow, which were probably torn out by a ravenous hawk. Yes, here is a spatter of blood on the paper that the rains have failed to erase and will never wash out, though that paper is buried for years. Across the middle of the sheet is where an earthworm has traveled, and near at hand is the track of a mole, its mortal enemy. The mole followed the worm, and the footprints mar the straight channel made by the annelid all the way. A broad wavy line in one corner shows where a snake has been along, seeking for stray bugs, and over all the slimy tracks of the slow but industrious snails shine like mica. In addition to these, I find the fragments of a cabbage butterfly's wing with the powder still clinging in places; a few hairs of a muskrat, loosened, perhaps, by a predatory mink; several dead dragonflies, as stiff as mummies; the head of a dead ant, with his big eyes staring at me as if in reproach; the cases of two cad dice worms; and bits of severed twigs and grass and leaves and bark innumerable. I have found all these sitting here and looking at the paper I have torn up and which has not surface enough to cover the top of my desk; but the tale it tells is the history of the whole summer with its loves and hates and mirth and music—simply the story of one summer printed in pictures on paper, and issued by Nature to file away in her great library of past events.

Below the top pages are the other books of this valuable collection. Every sheet represents a year. Possibly, in seasons where two dry spells with an intervening period of continued rainfall occur, there may be two sheets of paper issued in a year; but then, again, there have been very wet years when no paper at all could be made, so it is safe to count on one sheet a year. Taking this as the basis of my calculations, I dig out a bit of the record on the point of my spade about midway to the bottom and count up how many sheets I cut through in going down an inch. The sheets are very fine and closely pressed, so I find trouble in counting, but after several trials I feel sure the average is fully three hundred sheets to an inch, which would make thirty-six hundred sheets to every foot in depth. Now, my spade blade is a foot long, and below this is as much more, and that takes me away back of any historical record now extant. So here I have a paper factory that is more than seven thousand years old, and the same blue clay and sand and shells were under it then that are there now. Yet my paper mill was started in modern times when the glacier works were on the surrounding hills no plainer than they are to-day.

Beyond doubt this little handful of crumbling,