’Within the big valves of the door—­which were open and broken—­we found, instead of the customary hall, a long gallery lit by many side windows.  At the first glance I was reminded of a museum.  The tiled floor was thick with dust, and a remarkable array of miscellaneous objects was shrouded in the same grey covering.  Then I perceived, standing strange and gaunt in the centre of the hall, what was clearly the lower part of a huge skeleton.  I recognized by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature after the fashion of the Megatherium.  The skull and the upper bones lay beside it in the thick dust, and in one place, where rain-water had dropped through a leak in the roof, the thing itself had been worn away.  Further in the gallery was the huge skeleton barrel of a Brontosaurus.  My museum hypothesis was confirmed.  Going towards the side I found what appeared to be sloping shelves, and clearing away the thick dust, I found the old familiar glass cases of our own time.  But they must have been air-tight to judge from the fair preservation of some of their contents.

’Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter-day South Kensington!  Here, apparently, was the Palaeontological Section, and a very splendid array of fossils it must have been, though the inevitable process of decay that had been staved off for a time, and had, through the extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-nine hundredths of its force, was nevertheless, with extreme sureness if with extreme slowness at work again upon all its treasures.  Here and there I found traces of the little people in the shape of rare fossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds.  And the cases had in some instances been bodily removed—­by the Morlocks as I judged.  The place was very silent.  The thick dust deadened our footsteps.  Weena, who had been rolling a sea urchin down the sloping glass of a case, presently came, as I stared about me, and very quietly took my hand and stood beside me.

’And at first I was so much surprised by this ancient monument of an intellectual age, that I gave no thought to the possibilities it presented.  Even my preoccupation about the Time Machine receded a little from my mind.

’To judge from the size of the place, this Palace of Green Porcelain had a great deal more in it than a Gallery of Palaeontology; possibly historical galleries; it might be, even a library!  To me, at least in my present circumstances, these would be vastly more interesting than this spectacle of oldtime geology in decay.  Exploring, I found another short gallery running transversely to the first.  This appeared to be devoted to minerals, and the sight of a block of sulphur set my mind running on gunpowder.  But I could find no saltpeter; indeed, no nitrates of any kind.  Doubtless they had deliquesced ages ago.  Yet the sulphur hung in my mind, and set up a train of thinking.  As for the rest of the contents of that gallery, though on the whole they