Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/294

282*, peaty pulp I now hold in my hand was made and filed away at a time when the mastodon came along here for food and the big American elephant shook the earth with his heavy steps. If I had time and patience, what a story this old library of primitive paper could tell me! It would be the tale of the world, who lived on it, how they lived and how they died, the story of storm and freshet and tornado, of drought and fire and famine, and the family record of every insect, mammal, and bird which has visited this field for the past seven thousand years. The proofs of the photographer fade and go out to nothing, the images of the spectroscope die with the light which created them, and the dormant words in the phonograph lisp and stutter with age and much using; but Nature's record book, which is always open and always getting new additions, holds fast to every fact, no matter how trivial it may seem, and will keep them all there in evidence until the senile earth wrinkles up, like a sun-dried lemon, and floats through space a cold and shriveled husk. This paper mill, I have found, old as it is, measures but one beat of the pendulum on the great clock of geologic time, a clock that was wound up millions of years before man came on earth, and will continue to run for millions of years after the last human being has gone.

A heavy rainfall came on before I had finished my digging, and when I visit my paper mill again it is flooded with water. Both work and study are useless here at present, and I pass an hour watching the pool, and noting how the added water has increased the activity of the aquatic animals that make it their home. All the wigglers in wigglerdom are out zigzagging themselves to the top of the water to stick their star-shaped noses up for a bit of air, and then falling to the bottom again to feed on the decaying muck. The pond seems alive with them, and the frogs are having a feast, eating wigglers by the dozen at every swallow. My ducks come waddling up from the house, and enter the pond for a swim; but, catching sight of the frogs, they conclude to abandon their bath and have a frog dinner. For the next ten minutes the water is a splashing, boiling sea, lashed into waves by fleeing frogs and pursuing ducks.

report of the British Association's Committee on the Teaching of Science in Elementary Schools represents that while much improvement has been made in the character of the teaching, difficulty still exists in getting it done by experiments and in a truly educational way, rather than as a series of useful but isolated facts. School teachers are generally enthusiastic in their endeavor to obtain a knowledge of science when classes are organized for their benefit. Progress is making in the number of subjects taught in elementary schools and the number of pupils receiving instruction.