Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/86

67 mud, of which the cliffs on Corio Bay are composed: it is full of fossil specimens of Dentalium or Tooth Shells, curved tubes open at the extremities, and either smooth or striated longitudinally; splendid Terebratulæ (Waldheimia probably,) are also there in abundance, some Pectenideæ, &c. The Terebratulce are the shells commonly called "Lamp Shells," from the aperture through which the pedicle, whereby the animal attaches itself to submarine objects, passes, having some similarity to the hole which in a lamp admits the wick. A species is figured at page 60, in company with the Spatangus from Portland Bay. Microscopists will find a beautiful object in the shell of the Waldheimia, and many other Brachiopoda.

But we have yet to speak of the Marine Algæ, and the Aquarium, so that our Sea-side chattings must for a while cease; in all our ramblings in search of the many wonders of Nature we have been forcibly impressed by a vigorous sentence in one of Emerson's Essays, wherein he suggests the advantage which a country life possesses for a powerful mind, over the artificial and curtailed life of cities. He says:—" We know more from Nature than we can at will communicate. Its light flows into the mind evermore, and we forget its presence. The poet, the orator, bred in the woods, whose senses have been nourished by their fair and appeasing changes, year after year, without design, and without heed, shall not lose their lesson altogether, in the roar of cities or the broil of politics. Long hereafter, amidst agitation and terror in National Councils,—in the hour of revolution,—the solemn images shall re-appear in their morning lustre, as fit