I only
mention it to show them what serious questions the scientific man has
to face, and to answer, if he can. Only the next time they go to the
Zoological Gardens in London, let them go to the reptile-house, and
ask the very clever and courteous attendant to show them the
Sphenodons, or Hatterias, as he will probably call them--and then
look, I hope with kindly interest, at the oldest Conservatives they
ever saw, or are like to see; gentlemen of most ancient pedigree, who
have remained all but unchanged, while the whole surface of the globe
has changed around them more than once or twice.
And now, of course, my readers will expect to hear something of the
deposits of rock-salt, for which Cheshire and its red rocks are
famous. I have never seen them, and can only say that the salt does
not, it is said by geologists, lie in the sandstone, but at the
bottom of the red marl which caps the sandstone. It was formed most
probably by the gradual drying up of lagoons, such as are depositing
salt, it is said now, both in the Gulf of Tadjara, on the Abyssinian
frontier opposite Aden, and in the Runn of Cutch, near the Delta of
the Indus. If this be so, then these New Red sandstones may be the
remains of a whole Sahara--a sheet of sandy and all but lifeless
deserts, reaching from the west of England into Germany, and rising
slowly out of the sea; to sink, as we shall find, beneath the sea
again.
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