Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter-day South Kensington!
Here, apparently, was the Pal ontological 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 Pal ontology; 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 old-time 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 saltpetre; 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 were the
best preserved of all I saw, I had little interest. I am no specialist
in mineralogy, and I went on down a very ruinous aisle running parallel
to the first hall I had entered. Apparently this section had been
devoted to natural history, but everything had long since passed out of
recognition. A few shrivelled and blackened vestiges of what had once
been stuffed animals, desiccated mummies in jars that had once held
spirit, a brown dust of departed plants: that was all! I was sorry for
that, because I should have been glad to trace the patient
57