The Time Machine - International World History Project

The Time Machinelong gallery lit by many side windows. At the first glance Iwas reminded of a museum. The tiled floor was thick withdust, and a remarkable array of miscellaneous objects wasshrouded in the same grey covering. Then I perceived,standing strange and gaunt in the centre of the hall, whatwas clearly the lower part of a huge skeleton. I recognizedby the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature afterthe fashion of the Megatherium. The skull and the upperbones 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 gallerywas the huge skeleton barrel of a Brontosaurus. Mymuseum hypothesis was confirmed. Going towards theside I found what appeared to be sloping shelves, andclearing away the thick dust, I found the old familiar glasscases of our own time. But they must have been air-tightto judge from the fair preservation of some of theircontents.‘Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter-daySouth Kensington! Here, apparently, was thePalaeontological Section, and a very splendid array offossils it must have been, though the inevitable process ofdecay that had been staved off for a time, and had,through the extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-104 of 148