e had also
been a hundred and seventy-five floodings of the earth and depositings of
limestone strata! The unavoidable deduction from which pair of facts was
the overwhelming truth that the world, instead of being only two hundred
thousand years old, was older by millions upon millions of years! And
there was another curious thing: every stratum of Old Red Sandstone was
pierced and divided at mathematically regular intervals by vertical
strata of limestone. Up-shootings of igneous rock through fractures in
water formations were common; but here was the first instance where
water-formed rock had been so projected. It was a great and noble
discovery, and its value to science was considered to be inestimable.

A critical examination of some of the lower strata demonstrated the
presence of fossil ants and tumble-bugs (the latter accompanied by their
peculiar goods), and with high gratification the fact was enrolled upon
the scientific record; for this was proof that these vulgar laborers
belonged to the first and lowest orders of created beings, though at the
same time there was something repulsive in the reflection that the
perfect and exquisite creature of the modern uppermost order owed its
origin to such ignominious beings through the mysterious law of
Development of Species.

The Tumble-Bug, overhearing this discussion, said he was willing that the
parvenus of these new times should find what comfort they might in their
wise-drawn theories, since as far as he was concerned he was content to
be of the old first families and proud to point back to his place among
the old original aristocracy of the land.

"Enjoy your mushroom dignity, stinking of the varnish of yesterday's
veneering, since you like it," said he; "suffice it for the Tumble-Bugs
that they come of a race that rolled their fragrant spheres down the
solemn aisles of antiquity, and left their imperishable works embalmed in
the Old Red Sandstone to proclaim it to the wasting centuries as they
file along the highway of Time!"

"Oh, take a walk!" said the chief of the expedition, with derision.

The summer passed, and winter approached. In and about many of the
caverns were what seemed to be inscriptions. Most of the scientists said
they were inscriptions, a few said they were not. The chief philologist,
Professor Woodlouse, maintained that they were writings, done in a
character utterly unknown to scholars, and in a language equally unknown.
He had e