United States or Belize ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
So the ice plowed across Oconto County, and little Favosites was rooted out from the quiet place where he had lain so long; but, by good fortune, he happened to slip into a crevice in the ice, where he wasn't much crowded, else he would have been ground to powder, as most of his relatives were, and I shouldn't have had this story to tell.
Well, the ice slid along, melting all the while, and making great torrents of water which, as they swept onward, covered land with clay and pebbles, till at last it came to a great swamp, overgrown with tamarac and cedar. Here it stopped and melted, and all the rocks and stones and dirt it had carried with it, little Favosites and all, were dumped into one great heap.
We come next to the most typical portion of the Devonian system, including the great limestones of Plymouth and Torbay, replete with shells, trilobites, and corals. Of the corals 51 species are enumerated by Mr. Etheridge, none of which pass into the Carboniferous formation. Among the genera we find Favosites, Heliolites, and Cyathophyllum. Stringocephalus Burtini, Def. a. Valves united. b.
Once in a while, some one in the company would get mad because the others got all of the lime, or would feel uneasy at sitting still so long and swallowing stones, and would secede from the little union, without as much as saying "Good-bye," and would sail around like the old Medusa, and would lay more eggs, which would hatch out into more Favosites.
The interior has more the features of Acervularia than Cyathophyllum; but there are patches of broken transverse septa in the rock which exhibit the features of the latter. Associated with this is a branching coral, a fragment of which, in a small angle of one of the surfaces of the stone, exhibits the characters of Favosites.
Near Wenlock it consists of thick masses of grey subcrystalline limestone, replete with corals, encrinites, and trilobites. It is essentially of a concretionary nature; and the concretions, termed "ball-stones" in Shropshire, are often enormous, even 80 feet in diameter. Halysites catenularius, Linn. sp. Favosites Gothlandica, Lam. Dudley. a. Portion of a large mass; less than the natural size. b.
But the ferns died, and the reptiles died, and the rush-trees fell into the swamps, and the Mississippi, now become quite a river, covered them up, and they were packed away under great layers of clay and sand, till at last they were turned into coal, and wept bitter tears of petroleum. But all the while Favosites lay in the rock at Oconto.
But the time of the old fishes came and went, and many more times came and went, but still Favosites lay in the ground. Then came the long, hot, wet summer, when the mists hung over the earth so thick that you might almost have cut them into chunks with a knife, like a loaf of gingerbread; and great ferns and rushes, big as an oak and tall as a steeple, grew over the land.
But little Favosites became lonesome all alone on the bottom of that old ocean, among so many outlandish neighbors; and so, one night, when he was fast asleep, and dreaming as only a coral animal can dream, there sprouted out of his side, where his sixth rib would have been if he had had so many, another little Favosites, who very soon began to eat worms and wall himself up as if for dear life.
Hemispherical Favosites, five or six feet in diameter, lie there nearly as perfect as when they were covered by their flower-like polypes; and besides these, there are various branching corals, and a profusion of Cyathophiyllia, or cup-corals."
Word Of The Day