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 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,

The Time Machine