of great fishes
armed with strong teeth, enabling them to crush the shell-fish upon
which they fed. These swarmed below the sea in thousands. North England
and the Midlands have the Kemper beds, where the 'seas' were always
shallow, and where we can trace the marks of rain-drop filterings and
sun-cracks. The rock-salt is often in a layer one hundred feet thick. It
is supposed that one part of these seas was separated from another part
by a bar of sand, over which the waves toppled only now and then. In the
cut-off sea, evaporation went on through the ages, and of course a
deposit of salt was formed, while the occasional overflow from outside
replaced the water which had evaporated. But really this is not known
for certain. It is only clear rock-salt contains the minerals we find in
our present sea-water, bromine, iodine, and magnesia.

Generally, this salt is not mixed with fragments of a different
substance, but is in columns of rough crystals. Now and then there is
found a layer of rock-salt, with one of marl and shells under it,
succeeded by rock-salt again, showing that for a time a change had taken
place.

Rock-salt sometimes melts a little under the earth, and if that happens,
the rocks above it sink, and in that way hollows have been formed.

Upon the land near these shallow salt seas lived some singular animals,
unlike those of our earth in the later centuries of its history. There
were remarkable reptiles belonging to the frog or Batrachian family. One
of the species was the size of a small ox, with peculiar complicated
teeth, and feet which left prints on the earth so exactly like the
impressions of the human hand, that geologists gave it a Latin name
meaning 'the beast with the hand.' Another strange creature was a sort
of lizard, with a horny bill, and feet resembling those of the duck; it
had somewhat the appearance of a turtle, it is supposed. Then there were
some warm-blooded animals about the size of a rat, which had pouches in
their cheeks, and preyed upon small insects.

PING-KWE'S DOWNFALL.

It was Ping-Kwe's fondness for a river excursion, combined with the fact
of his possessing a very hasty temper, which led to his downfall. It
happened in this wise.

One day it chanced that he was in a particularly bad frame of mind; he
quarrelled with his wife, he heat his two little yellow-faced bairns,
and after doing all that was possible to promote discord in his
household, he started off on o