(_To be concluded in our next_.)

* * * * *


ARCANA OF SCIENCE.


_Sheppey_.--The isle of Sheppey is quickly giving way to the sea, and
if measures are not hereafter taken to remedy this, possibly in a
century or two hence its name may be required to be obliterated from
the map. Whole acres, with houses upon them, have been carried away in
a single storm, while clay shallows, sprinkled with sand and gravel,
which stretch a full mile beyond the verge of the cliff, over which
the sea now sweeps, demonstrate the original area of the island. From
the blue clay of which these cliffs are composed may be culled out
specimens of all the fishes, fruits, and trees, which abounded in
Britain before the birth of Noah; and the traveller may consequently
handle fish which swam, and fruit which grew, in the days of the
antediluvians, all now converted into sound stone, by the petrifying
qualities of the soil in which they are imbedded. Here are lobsters,
crabs, and nautili, presenting almost the same reality as those we now
see crawling and floating about; branches of trees, too, in as perfect
order as when lopped from their parent stems; and trunks of them,
twelve feet in length and two or three diameter, fit, in all
appearance, for the operations of the saw, with great varieties of
fruits, resembling more those of tropical climates than of cold
latitudes like ours, one species having a large kernel, with an
adherent stalk, as complete as when newly plucked from the tree that
produced it. An interesting collection of these relics of a former