And why should not the slates in the roof be the remnants of the very beds which are now the marl in the fields?

The white marl about their naked tops gives them a bleak and desolate appearance, which contrasts gloomily with the verdure of the surrounding cultivation.

The townsman, finding this, would have a fair right to suppose that the clay was laid down immediately, or at least soon after, the sandstones or marls on which it lies; that as soon as the one had settled at the bottom of some old sea, the other settled on the top of it, in the same sea.

Some valuable observations on the formation of recent limestone, in beds of shelly marl at the bottom of lakes in Scotland, have been read before the Geological Society by Mr. Lyell, and will appear in the volume of the Transactions now in the press.

Next year he is set in November to clean out a watercourse knee-deep in water; then to take marl from a pit; and then to drain standing water off a swamp during an intense December frost; and finds himself laid down with a three months' cough, and all but sleepless illness, laying the foundation of the consumption which destroyed him.

Thurstane presently solved the mystery by pointing out three crouching figures on the flat cap of stone which surmounted the shales and marl of the butte.

He treads the burning marl without dismay; he wins his flight without self-loss through realms of chaos "and old night.