“Monster fishes swam the silent main;
      Stately forests waved their giant branches,
      Mountains hurled their snowy avalanches
    Mammoth creatures stalked across the plain;
      Nature revelled in grand mysteries,
      But the little fern was not of these,
      Did not number with the hills and trees;
      Only grew and waved its wild sweet way,
      No one came to note it day by day.

    “Earth, one time, put on a frolic mood,
      Heaved the rocks and changed the mighty motion
      Of the deep, strong currents of the ocean;
    Moved the plain and shook the haughty wood
      Crushed the little fern in soft, moist clay,—­
      Covered it and hid it safe away. 
      O, the long, long centuries since that day! 
      O, the changes!  O, life’s bitter cost,
      Since that useless little fern was lost!

    “Useless?  Lost?  There came a thoughtful man
      Searching Nature’s secrets, far and deep;
      From a fissure in a rocky steep
    He withdrew a stone, o’er which there ran
      Fairy pencilings, a quaint design,
      Veinings, leafage, fibers clear and fine,
      And the fern’s life lay in every line! 
      So, I think, God hides some souls away,
      Sweetly to surprise us, the last day.”

From the Museum the party went to the Bronx where they first took a long walk through the Zoo.  How Mary wished that she did not have on a pale blue silk dress and high heeled shoes as she dragged her tired feet over the gravel paths and stood watching Gunda, the elephant, “weaving” back and forth on his chain, and the tigers and leopards keeping up their restless pacing up and down their cages, and the monkeys, chattering hideously and snatching through the bars at any shining object worn by their visitors!  It was only because she stepped back nimbly that she did not lose a locket that attracted the attention of an ugly imitation of a human being.

The herds of large animals pleased them all.

“How kind it is of the keepers to give these creatures companions and the same sort of place to live in that they are accustomed to,” commented Ethel Brown.

“Did you know that this is one of the largest herds of buffalo in the United States?” asked Tom, who, with Della, had joined them at the Museum.  “Father says that when he was young there used to be plenty of buffalo on the western plains.  The horse-car drivers used to wear coats of buffalo skin and every new England farmer had a buffalo robe.  It was the cheapest fur in use.  Then the railroads went over the plains and there was such a destruction of the big beasts that they were practically exterminated.  They are carefully preserved now.”

“The prairie dogs always amuse me,” said Mrs. Smith.  “Look at that fellow!  Every other one is eating his dinner as fast as he can but this one is digging with his front paws and kicking the earth away with his hind paws with amazing industry.”