PARODIES.

The birds that once walked on the ground;

Oh! come, and - in technical speech

We'll walk this Devonian shore,

Or on some Silurian beach

We'll wander, my love, evermore.

I will show thee the sinuous track

By the slow-moving annelid made,

Or the trilobite, that, farther back,

In the old Potsdam sandstone was laid.

Thou shalt see, in his Jurassic tomb,

The plesiosaurus embalmed;

In his oolitic prime and his bloom,-
Iguanodon, safe and unharmed!

You wished I remember it well,

And I loved you the more for that wish

For a perfect cystedian shell

And a whole holocephalic fish.

And oh if Earth's strata contains

In its lowest Silurian drift,

Or palæozoic remains,

The same, -'tis lover's free gift!

your

Then come, love, and never say nay,

But calm all your maidenly fears: We'll note, love, in one summer's day The record of millions of years;

And though the Darwinian plan

Your sensitive feelings may shock,

We'll find the beginning of man,

Our fossil ancestors in rock!

13

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