d lang syne, more widely opened, or displayed in higher
piles. The whole canyon is a mine of fossils, in which five thousand
feet of horizontal strata are exposed in regular succession over more
than a thousand square miles of wall-space, and on the adjacent plateau
region there is another series of beds twice as thick, forming a grand
geological library--a collection of stone books covering thousands of
miles of shelving, tier on tier, conveniently arranged for the student.
And with what wonderful scriptures are their pages filled--myriad forms
of successive floras and faunas, lavishly illustrated with colored
drawings, carrying us back into the midst of the life of a past
infinitely remote. And as we go on and on, studying this old, old life
in the light of the life beating warmly about us, we enrich and lengthen
our own.

THE END

Footnotes:

[by the editor of the 1918 original of this text]:

[Footnote 1: This essay was written early in 1875.]

[Footnote 2: The wild sheep of California are now classified as Ovis
nelsoni. Whether those of the Shasta region belonged to the latter
species, or to the bighorn species of Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, is
still an unsettled question.]

[Footnote 3: An excerpt from a letter to a friend, written in 1872.]

[Footnote 4: Muir at this time was making Yosemite Valley his home.]

[Footnote 5: An obsolete genus of plants now replaced in the main by
Chrysothamnus and Ericameria.]

[Footnote 6: An early local name for what is now known as Lassen
Peak, or Mt. Lassen. In 1914 its volcanic activity was resumed with
spectacular eruptions of ashes, steam, and gas.]

[Footnote 7: Pronounced Too'-lay.]

[Footnote 8: Letter dated "Salt Lake City, Utah, May 15, 1877."]

[Footnote 9: Letter dated "Salt Lake City, Utah, May 19, 1877."]

[Footnote 10: Letter dated "Lake Point, Utah, May 20, 1877."]

[Footnote 11: Letter dated "Salt Lake, July, 1877."]

[Footnote 12: Letter dated "September 1, 1877."]

[Footnote 13: Letter written during the first week of September, 1877. ]

[Footnote 14: The spruce, or hemlock, then known as Abies Douglasii var.
macrocarpa is now called Pseudotsuga macrocarpa.]

[Footnote 15: Written at Ward, Nevada, in September, 1878.]

[Footnote 16: See footnote 5.]

[Footnote 17: Written at Eureka, Nevada, in October, 1878.]

[Footnote 18: Now called Pinus monophylla, or one-leaf pinyon.]

[Footnote 19: Written at Pioche, Nevada, in Octob