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

The Time Machine