as a
world silent, motionless, and bare; there long plants swayed to and fro
in a fog that resembled the vapour of a sweating-room. A red sun
overheated the humid atmosphere. Then volcanoes burst forth; the igneous
rocks sent up mountains of liquid flame, and the paste of the streaming
porphyry and basalt began to congeal. Third picture: in shallow seas
have sprung up isles of madrepore; a cluster of palm trees overhangs
them here and there. There are shells like carriage wheels, tortoises
three metres in length, lizards of sixty feet; amphibians stretch out
amid the reeds their ostrich necks and crocodile jaws; winged serpents
fly about. Finally, on the large continents, huge mammifers make their
appearance, their limbs misshapen, like pieces of wood badly squared,
their hides thicker than plates of bronze, or else shaggy,
thick-lipped, with manes and crooked fangs. Flocks of mammoths browsed
on the plains where, since, the Atlantic has been; the paleotherium,
half horse, half tapir, overturned with his tumbling the ant-hills of
Montmartre; and the _cervus giganteus_ trembled under the chestnut trees
at the growls of the bears of the caverns, who made the dog of
Beaugency, three times as big as a wolf, yelp in his den.

All these periods had been separated from one another by cataclysms, of
which the latest is our Deluge. It was like a drama of fairyland in
several acts, with man for apotheosis.

They were astounded when they learned that there existed on stones
imprints of dragon-flies and birds' claws; and, having run through one
of the Roret manuals, they looked out for fossils.

One afternoon, as they were turning over some flints in the middle of
the high-road, the cure passed, and, accosting them in a wheedling tone:

"These gentlemen are busying themselves with geology. Very good."

For he held this science in esteem. It confirmed the authority of the
Scriptures by proving the fact of the Deluge.

Bouvard talked about coprolites, which are animals' excrements in a
petrified state.

The Abbe Jeufroy appeared surprised at the matter. After all, if it were
so, it was a reason the more for wondering at Providence.

Pecuchet confessed that, up to the present, their inquiries had not been
fruitful; and yet the environs of Falaise, like all Jurassic soils,
should abound in remains of animals.

"I have been told," replied the Abbe Jeufroy, "that the jawbone of an
elephant was at one time found at Villers."