-taking, he grasped me warmly by both hands, and seemed as
much interested in our whole party as if he had known us for years. All
this was genuine feeling, a quick, luxuriant growth out of his heart,
which was a soil for flower-seeds of rich and rare varieties, not
acorns, but a true heart, nevertheless. Several years afterwards I met
him for the last time at a London dinner-party, looking sadly broken
down by infirmities; and my final recollection of the beautiful old man
presents him arm in arm with, nay, partly embraced and supported by, if
I mistake not, another beloved and honored poet, whose minstrel-name,
since he has a week-day one for his personal occasions, I will venture
to speak. It was Barry Cornwall, whose kind introduction had first made
me known to Leigh Hunt.

* * * * *

THE FERN FORESTS OF THE CARBONIFEROUS PERIOD.

Draw two lines on your map, the upper one running from the mouth of the
St. Lawrence westward nearly to St. Paul on the Mississippi, and the
lower one from the neighborhood of St. John's in Newfoundland running
southwesterly about to the point where the Wisconsin joins the
Mississippi, but jutting down to form an extensive peninsula comprising
part of the States of Indiana and Illinois, and you include between them
all of the United States which existed at the close of the Devonian
period. The upper line rests against the granite hills dividing the
Silurian and Devonian deposits of the British Possessions to the north
from those of the United States to the south, Canada itself consisting,
in great part, of the granite ridge.

How far the early deposits extended to the north of the Laurentian
Hills, as well as the outline of that portion of the continent in those
times, remains still very problematical; but the investigations thus far
undertaken in those regions would lead to the supposition that the same
granite upheaval which raised Canada stretched northward in a broad,
low ridge of land, widening in its upper part and extending to the
neighborhood of Bathurst Inlet and King William's Island, while on
either side of it to the east and west the Silurian and Devonian
deposits extended far toward the present outlines of the continent.

Indeed, our geological surveys, as well as the information otherwise
obtained concerning the primitive condition of North America and the
gradual accessions it has received in more recent periods, point to a
very early