“Surrounding these fossils were objects that would mean nothing to the ignorant, but to the eye of science they were a revelation.  They laid bare the secrets of dead ages.  These musty Memorials told us when Man lived, and what were his habits.  For here, side by side with Man, were the evidences that he had lived in the earliest ages of creation, the companion of the other low orders of life that belonged to that forgotten time.  Here was the fossil nautilus that sailed the primeval seas; here was the skeleton of the mastodon, the ichthyosaurus, the cave-bear, the prodigious elk.  Here, also, were the charred bones of some of these extinct animals and of the young of Man’s own species, split lengthwise, showing that to his taste the marrow was a toothsome luxury.  It was plain that Man had robbed those bones of their contents, since no tooth-mark of any beast was upon them albeit the Tumble-Bug intruded the remark that ‘no beast could mark a bone with its teeth, anyway.’  Here were proofs that Man had vague, groveling notions of art; for this fact was conveyed by certain things marked with the untranslatable words, ’flint hatchets, knives, arrow—­Heads, and bone ornaments of primeval man.’  Some of these seemed to be rude weapons chipped out of flint, and in a secret place was found some more in process of construction, with this untranslatable legend, on a thin, flimsy material, lying by: 

“’Jones, if you don’t want to be discharged from the Musseum, make the next primeaveal weppons more careful—­you couldn’t even fool one of these sleepy old syentific grannys from the Coledge with the last ones.  And mind you the animles you carved on some of the Bone Ornaments is a blame sight too good for any primeaveal man that was ever fooled.—­Varnum, Manager.’

“Back of the burial place was a mass of ashes, showing that Man always had a feast at a funeral—­else why the ashes in such a place; and showing, also, that he believed in God and the immortality of the soil —­else why these solemn ceremonies?

“To, sum up.  We believe that Man had a written language.  We know that he indeed existed at one time, and is not a myth; also, that he was the companion of the cave-bear, the mastodon, and other extinct species; that he cooked and ate them and likewise the young of his own kind; also, that he bore rude weapons, and knew something of art; that he imagined he had a soul, and pleased himself with the fancy that it was immortal.  But let us not laugh; there may be creatures in existence to whom we and our vanities and profundities may seem as ludicrous.”

END OF PART SECOND

SOME LEARNED FABLES FOR GOOD OLD BOYS AND GIRLS

PART THIRD

Near the margin of the great river the scientists presently found a huge, shapely stone, with this inscription: