TECHNICAL VERSE. ANTICIPATORY DIRGE ON PROFESSOR BUCKLAND, THE GEOLOGIST. BY BISHOP SHUTTLEWORTH. OURN, Ammonites, mourn o'er his funeral urn, Whose neck ye must grace no more; Gneiss, Granite, and Slate !-he settled your date, Weep, Caverns, weep! with infiltering drip, For mineral veins or organic remains No Stratum again will he bore. Oh! his wit shone like crystal-his knowledge profound From Gravel to Granite descended; No Trap could deceive him, no Slip could confound, He knew the birth-rock of each pebble so round, His eloquence rolled like the Deluge retiring, To a subject obscure he gave charms so inspiring He stood forth like an Outlier; his hearers admiring Where shall we our great professor inter, He'll rise up and break the stones, If with mattock and spade his body we lay He'll start up and snatch those tools away In a Stratum so young the professor disdains That embedded should be his Organic Remains. Then, exposed to the drip of some case-hard'ning spring, His carcase let Stalactite cover; And to Oxford the petrified sage let us bring, When he is encrusted all over, There, mid Mammoths and Crocodiles, high on a shelf, Let him stand as a Monument raised to himself." When Professor Buckland's grave was being dug in Islip churchyard, in August 1856, the men came unexpectedly upon the solid limestone rock, which they were obliged to blast with gunpowder. The coincidence of this fact with some of the verses in the above anticipatory dirge is somewhat remarkable. The following is by Jacob F. Henrici, and appeared originally in Scribner's Magazine for November 1879: A MICROSCOPIC SERENADE. "Oh come, my love, and seek with me We'll rouse the stentor from his lair, And graceful vorticellida. Where melicertæ ply their craft And no envenomed hydra's shaft The growing rudimental heart. Where rolls the volvox sphere of green, We'll recognise, with rare delight, Oh dearer thou by far to me Come, go with me, and we will stray The epitaph following was written by the learned and witty Dr. Charles Smith, author of the histories of Cork and Waterford. It was read at a meeting. of the Dublin Medico-Philosophical Society on July 1, 1756, and is a very curious specimen of the "terminology of chemistry: " When he meekly approached, and sat down at her feet, That she would forgive him and try to be sweet, Then softly he whispered, 'How could you do so? But come thou with me, to the parson we'll go ; PREVALENT POETRY. "A wandering tribe, called the Siouxs, With the fleshy side in, Embroidered with beads of bright hyiouxs. When out on the war-path, the Siouxs March single file-never by tiouxs And by 'blazing' the trees Can return at their ease, And their way through the forests ne'er liouxs. All new-fashioned boats he eschiouxs, And uses the birch-bark caniouxs; These are handy and light, And, inverted at night, Give shelter from storms and from dyiouxs. The principal food of the Siouxs Is Indian maize, which they briouxs |