At different times portions of what was once the ocean bottom have been lifted and have become land. If these beds are examined they will be found to contain shells and corals and other sea animals which were buried in them when they were forming, and thus it is known that they were laid down under the sea. It is found also that the lower beds contain kinds of life different from those above, and the lower beds were, of course, formed first. So, by studying the sea-shells and other relics in the beds, from the lowest ones up to the highest ones in the order in which they were formed, the various kinds of life that have lived in the sea from the beginning are found out. The life at the beginning was simpler than it is now, and quite different in many respects. There were gradual changes from time to time, and many strange creatures appeared that do not live at present.
RETURNING HOME.
GUY STEALEY.
I HAVE often wondered whether birds, like persons, do not grow to love some one locality better than all others, and if they do not return there year after year to make it their home. My belief is that they do. I have observed many cases that tend to confirm my views, and give a couple of them below.
One spring, six years ago, while my grandmother and I were out milking in the corral one evening, a pair of killdeer flew over our heads and, after circling around a few times, settled near us. We noticed then that the male had only one leg, the other being broken off near the knee. They skipped around in the way they have, stopping now and then to pick up a worm. All that summer they came nearly every night to catch the bugs and worms, which they often carried to the little fledglings in their nest by the lake.
Well, time passed on. Autumn came and went, and with it the killdeer and their young. The long winter wore away; then, on a bright spring morning, in precisely the same manner as before, our two friends, the killdeer, darted down in the corral again and went to feeding. The old fellow hopped about on his one leg as of yore, and seemed glad to see us again.
The next year it was the same way. They arrived at about the same time as on the two previous seasons, and hatched out their young as usual, down by the lake. They were quite tame by this time, and we began to regard them as pets.