Genus_____________________________________
Species___________________________________
Formation_________________________________
Locality__________________________________
(which can always be obtained at a cheap rate from the London dealers), or else set to work and copy them yourself in a good plain hand, so that there is no mistaking what you write. As far as possible, in each drawer or drawers representing a geological formation, arrange your specimens in natural-history order—the lowest organisms first, gradually ascending to the higher. By doing so, you present geological and zoological relationship, so that they can be taken in at a glance. You further make yourself acquainted with the relations of the fossils in a way you never would have done, had you been content to huddle them together in any fashion, so that you had them all together. Glass-topped boxes, again, are very useful in the cabinet, especially for delicate or fragile fossils, as people are so ready to take them in their hands when they are shown, little thinking how soon a cherished rarity may be destroyed, never to be replaced. Pasteboard trays, made of stiff green paper, squared by the student according to size, can also be so arranged as that the drawer may be entirely filled, and so the danger of shaking the contents about may be removed. Each tray of fossils ought to have the above-mentioned label fastened down in such a way as that it cannot by accident get changed by removal.
The spring and summer time are fast approaching, and we know of nothing that will so much assist in their rational enjoyment as the adoption of some study in natural science. Botany, entomology, ornithology, geology, are all health-affording, nature-loving pursuits. We have passed some of the very happiest moments of our lives in solitary quarries, or on green hill-sides,
"The world forgetting, by the world forgot!"
There, amid the wreck of former creations, and with the glory of the present one around us, we have yielded to the delicious sense of reverie, such as can only be begotten under such circumstances. The shady side of the quarry has screened us from solar heat, and, whilst the air has been melodious with a thousand voices, we have made personal acquaintance with the numerous objects of God's creation, animals and plants. How apt are the thoughts of the poet Crabbe, and how well do they convey the feeling of the young geologist in such places:
"It is a lonely place, and at the side
Rises a mountain rock in rugged pride;
And in that rock are shapes of shells, and forms
Of creatures in old worlds, and nameless worms;
Whole generations lived and died, ere man,
A worm of other class, to crawl began."
II.
BONES.