a huge dam across the ravine; till, the "Ice age" past, a more
genial climate succeeded, and neve and glacier melted away: but
the "moraine" of stones did not, and remains to this day, as the
dam which keeps up the waters of the lake.

There is my explanation. If you can find a better, do: but
remember always that it must include an answer to - "How did the
stones get across the lake?"

Now, reader, we have had no abstruse science here, no long words,
not even a microscope or a book: and yet we, as two plain
sportsmen, have gone back, or been led back by fact and common
sense, into the most awful and sublime depths, into an epos of the
destruction and re-creation of a former world.

This is but a single instance; I might give hundreds. This one,
nevertheless, may have some effect in awakening you to the
boundless world of wonders which is all around you, and make you
ask yourself seriously, "What branch of Natural History shall I
begin to investigate, if it be but for a few weeks, this summer?"

To which I answer, Try "the Wonders of the Shore." There are along
every sea-beach more strange things to be seen, and those to be
seen easily, than in any other field of observation which you will
find in these islands. And on the shore only will you have the
enjoyment of finding new species, of adding your mite to the
treasures of science.

For not only the English ferns, but the natural history of all our
land species, are now well-nigh exhausted. Our home botanists and