Then the mists cleared away as gradually as they had come, the sun shone out, the grass grew, and strange four-footed animals came and fed upon it. Among these were odd-looking little horses no bigger than foxes; great hairy monsters larger than elephants, with tremendous tusks; hogs with snouts nearly as long as their bodies; and other strange creatures that no man has ever seen alive. But still the house of the Favosites remained where it was.
Next came the great winter, and it continued to snow till the mountains were hidden. Then the snow was packed into ice, and Canada became one solid glacier. This ice age continued for many thousands of years.
At last the ice began to melt, and the glacier came slowly down the slopes, tearing up rocks, little and big, and crushing and grinding and carrying away everything in its course. It ploughed its way across Ontario, and the skeleton of our Favosites was rooted out from the quiet place where it had lain so long, and was caught up in a crevice of the ice. The glacier slid along, melting all the while, and covering the land with clay, pebbles, and boulders. At last it stopped, and as it gradually melted away, all the rocks and stones and dirt it had carried with it thus far, were deposited into one great heap, and the home of the Favosites along with them.
Ages afterwards a farmer, near Toronto, when ploughing a field, picked up a curious bit of "petrified honey-comb," and gave it to a geologist to hear what he would say about it. And now you have read what he said.
D. B.
THE SNOW-STORM
The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
The coming of the snow-storm told.
The wind blew east: we heard the roar
Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.
Meanwhile we did our nightly chores,—
Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows:
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows;
While, peering from his early perch
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch,
The cock his crested helmet bent
And down his querulous challenge sent.
Unwarmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag wavering to and fro
Crossed and recrossed the wingèd snow:
And ere the early bed-time came
The white drift piled the window-frame,
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.