leys or mountains or plains, perhaps all of these. If you look at water, you may see brooks, rivers, lakes, or oceans, perhaps all of these.

The whole of the earth that we can see is land or water. There is much more water than land, three times as much; that is, three-fourths of the earth's surface are covered with water; one-fourth is land.

The land and the water are slowly changing places. This is strange. Perhaps we may be able to understand how this is done; but before we enter upon this study, you are asked to read all that is said under the subject "vapor," in the Third Reader.

On the slope of a range of mountains lies a great lake many miles wide and very long. So large is it that several days would be required to go around it.

Into this lake flow three or four rivers and many small streams. These streams flow down

the mountain sides and long distances through the land, so that after heavy rains or when the snows are melting on the mountain tops, their waters are loaded with sand and mud which are carried into the lake and deposited on its bottom.

The rains dissolve the hard rocks of the mountain tops, and the frosts of winter break their surfaces into fine particles. These with other things, as bones of animals, skeletons of insects, shells, leaves, sticks, and trunks of trees, are swept into the lake.

Slowly but surely, year by year, the lake is filling up. After many, many years, too many for us to count, the water will be found only in brooks, creeks, or rivers that it cuts for itself while the lake is filling. The lake will be filled up.

When this has been done, a great sheet of sand and mud mingled with many other things will be spread over the broad plains where the lake once was. Through this will run the streams that drain the land.

You

This plain will be divided into layers or sheets, some of which will be thicker than others. will understand what is meant, by looking at the picture. Such a set of deposits as will here be found is called a geologic formation, or a formation of the earth's crust.

THE SEA.

The sea! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,

It runneth the earth's wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies,
Or like a cradled creature lies.

I'm on the sea! I'm on the sea!

I am where I would ever be,

With the blue above, and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe'er I go.

If a storm should come, and awake the deep,
What matter? I shall ride and sleep.

I love, oh, how I love to ride

On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
When every mad wave drowns the moon,
Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the sou'-west blast do blow!

I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I loved the great sea more and more,
And backward flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh his mother's nest;
And a mother she was and is to me,
For I was born on the open sea!

The waves were white, and red the morn,
In the noisy hour when I was born;
And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild
As welcomed to life the ocean child!

I've lived since then, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers a sailor's life,

With wealth to spend, and a power to range,
But never have sought nor sighed for change;
And Death, whenever he comes to me,

Shall come on the wild, unbounded sea!

-BRYAN WALLER PROCTER.