THE CLIFF BUILDERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2805, 18 December 1907, Page 75

THE CLIFF BUILDERS.

By k Barker.

When, standing on the seashore, we look up. at « lofty Mioge. of .pure snow-white chalk cliffs it i« difficult to xsabse that, these mighty buttressed ramparts and beetling cliffs were 1 formed by the gradual deposition upon the bottom of an ancient sea of toe shells of minute organisms, so small as to be practically invisible to the unaided vision, and -yet «o delicately and so beautifully i fashioned that they compare in symmetry «nd in elegance of form with any of .the larger shells which now are thrown up from the depths upon the seashore. If examined .with a powerful microscope the varied species of these, strange minute dwellers of the deep may be readily observed. Some are exactly similar to the beautiful and graceful nautilus, which, in the .dEgean Sea, may be seen sailing along upon the placid waters with their white membraneoua sail full set: some are shaped something like a Whitehead torpedo, pointed at both ends; and some exactly like a tiny starfish, but so minute that even the microscope almost fails to reveal it; together with a multiolicity of other form* too numerous to I describe. And in addition to theee infinitesinvally • diminutive shell ■ fish — for thoce warm primeval oceans teemed with exuberant lifethere are also in the chalk vast quantities -of other marine organism*; som*' similar to those of the present day; some extinct for eon* of time. Great ammonites — an animal corl«d round and round -in a massive shell, some of which, if extended, must have been many yards in length; cuttle fish and other cephalopoda; spiny sea-urchins; pear-shaped sponges, kept rigid by a multitude of flinty apparatus lik» double-headed grappling irons; with innumerable other strangely diverse forms.

- And so it went on, generation after generation, oga after age— vast myriads upon myriads of livinjr beings continually starting into existence, living out their span of life,

and then, sinking prone down to the depths, j forming a great submarine- deposit, which at j a subsequent eon, by a great convulsion of Nature, was upheaved from the abysm of f the deep, and—now forms those upreaxed snowy ramparts, which so add' to the striking - .beauty, oi parts of our shores. And so with all terrestrial life, from man ■ t down..,, to- the minutest organism.. 'We all '' ''SS^lflP^ ;sPff£fs3rß ' oocrn ° er cjr ihoxteE thSnV.pay 1 - 181 'flebl * *? IwlwiTe, then* '•vanish . from tTie j tßoene.t Boene. , But unlike the lower creation man .. " siitfdisfeoiutien starts into^a new existence — ■not -tb&ttenipcraiy iife of <a day, but an un- . ending spirit life. And aa ,the 'ea£th ** ' Bws^brtrocF, * terriß»H>aiiis*u^eitt^spni, His ■ preaenw*- ■ *l> in *coor«knce with "uJose laws. , and if. 'the punishment for <jnisdeeds naving be** by Another;- the Aosuser. can bring ' no.^&eus«tionrr * a Kf4 through all ~4iternity of joyous, rapturons felicity: " ?

. r-rA certain - convict i« more or less enviSd^by the 500 members of .the' Devonshire 'Association tqr Jt tha Advancement of Science. To him, abd not. to any of them, fell- the 'honour of 'making . the most important discovery in the association's four decides of history. "Working on a , bog at £rincetown; he" ' turned up *a bronze sword blade, 18in long and *7oz in weight, a relic of the Bronze- Age. The association contwnnlates rewarding the -convict

— Inexperienced men planted' 300 trees per day, while experienced men planted an average of 816, according to the report of the Leeds Distress Committee on -its afforestation work. The work lasted six months, and 200 of the unemployed took for these and 485 other men temporarily its horns, crashed into the fence surroundemnloyed in n, road-making, etc., came to £3636.'

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