GLIMPSES INTO NATURE'S SECRETS.
 
 GLI MPSES 
 
 INTO 
 
 NATURE'S SECRETS; 
 
 OR, 
 
 STROLLS ON BEACH AND DOWN. 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD ALFRED MARTIN. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 1890.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 A DESIRE to do something towards feeding the 
 J.~\ widespread demand for information concerning 
 the fascinating stories which Nature has to tell, is the 
 plea which the author offers for the appearance of 
 another work devoted to ' popular science.' 
 
 The first part is devoted to an attempt to bring 
 under the observer's notice a few facts relating to those 
 creatures of the sea-shore which, familiar more or less 
 to all, are always replete with interest to the seaside 
 sojourner, be he resident or visitor. It is hoped that 
 the following chapters will be found neither too long 
 nor tedious for those who seek but the elements of 
 knowledge connected with the inhabitants of the 
 shallows, nor too brief to obtain a satisfactory view of 
 their chief characteristics; and that they may prove 
 readable and entertaining, where lengthy and technical 
 descriptions would be out of place. 
 
 20909O8
 
 vi Preface. 
 
 In the second part the reader is familiarised with 
 the study of the ancient history of our globe, as 
 handed down to us in the form of rock-written 
 stories, giving us glimpses of the various phases 
 through which the earth has passed, and of the 
 strange successions of animal life which from time 
 to time, like a panorama, passed across the world's 
 arena. 
 
 Most of the chapters contained herein have been 
 contributed previously to the pages of various papers 
 and magazines, and the author begs to thank the 
 editors for their courtesy in permitting their repro- 
 duction. 
 
 That this collection of essays may act as a key to 
 unravel some of the secret wonders of Nature, now 
 hidden from so many, and that it may be the means 
 of creating additional interest in the subjects dealt 
 with, in the minds of those whose leisure hours are 
 few, is the sincere wish of an ardent lover of 
 Nature. 
 
 EDWARD A. MARTIN. 
 
 FOREST HILL, 
 1890.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 BY AZURE WAVES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SOMETHING ABOUT A SCALLOP-SHELL. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Parasites A Brazilian forest Science begins at home 
 Chalk-covered worms Protected by a sugar-loaf The 
 Sea of London Acorn-shells Dead-men's-fingers A 
 sea-flower A Utopian Commonwealth - - 3 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 WHAT IS WATER? HOW GEOLOGICAL STRATA ARE 
 DEPOSITED. 
 
 Water Its composition Saltness of the Dead Sea An 
 anemone's plight A fairy's hand How to make a salt- 
 water bath Suspension Solution - 9 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 POWDERED WATER. 
 
 Ducks and drakes Explanation The oyster A delicacy? 
 Nineteen dozen a day The maggoty-cheese eater 
 Pearls Natural cameos Vanity - -
 
 viii Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 WHAT IS A SPONGE? 
 
 PAGE 
 
 As we know it As it lived The skeleton Its flesh 
 Amoeba Convenient organs Ripple-marks Fossils - 21 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A NOVEL USE FOR MUSSELS. 
 
 A silk-spinning shell-fish Living cement Wood-borers 
 Sussex coal Lignite or brown coal False hopes The 
 Brighton Spa - - 26 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ABOUT CLAWS AND STONES. 
 
 A fishwife's belief It would not grow Flint crystals The 
 worse for wear Natural assortment of the beach and sand 31 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A CHAPTER ON THE SEA-URCHIN. 
 
 A soft body Radiating spines Fossil urchins Tube- feet 
 and suckers ' Hedgehog-skin ' Ingenious power of 
 growth Shell composed of numerous plates - - 35 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE STARFISH. 
 
 On its back Ten rows of feet Its power of renovation 
 when mutilated Stars and comets Sea-cucumbers 
 Lily encrinites - - 40 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 COMPOUND ANIMALS. 
 
 Three great classes Their names A sea-fern Its pre- 
 carious means of subsistence The coral-builders Fossil 
 coral-reefs Sea-mat It encrusts seaweed It is highly 
 organized - - 45
 
 Contents. ix 
 
 PART II. 
 
 ROCK-WRITTEN STORIES. 
 
 <i> 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A RAMBLE OVER THE DOWNS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Queen of Watering-places Her breezy Downs 
 Nature's Fairy-tales Southdown flocks Shady woods 
 Denudation of the chalk and overlying beds River- 
 drift man Ditchling Beacon A living panorama - 55 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A GEOLOGICAL JOURNEY FROM LONDON TO 
 BRIGHTON. 
 
 'As firm as the mountains' World-making Geological 
 Systems The subsoils of London Purley chalk-pit 
 North Downs Billiard -table of Sussex The Weald 
 The great Iguanodon Pouched animals in England 
 Elephant bed Strange fossils at Brighton - 71 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A TALE OF TWO TEETH. 
 
 An ancient world An ancient occupant A very useful 
 tooth A sufferer from toothache - - 86 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE GEOLOGICAL POSITION OF LONDON. 
 
 The London Basin Sections at the Charlton pits A 
 shell-marble Pebble-beds The London Clay From a 
 tropical to an arctic climate Ice-sheets and glaciers - 91
 
 x Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 NATURAL SCIENCE JOTTINGS FROM FELIXSTOWE. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 At the seaside The Norfolk and Suffolk cliffs Red Crag 
 London Clay Cement stones A reversed whelk- 
 River Deben Springs and streams Miniature Canons 100 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 A PIECE OF SANDSTONE. 
 
 Sermons and stones Books and brooks What is sand 
 Milk and water How granite blocks are worn down to 
 sand Consolidated by iron oxide The Coral Rag of 
 Oxfordshire A reptilian bird - - no 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 A FEW FACTS ABOUT THE ROMAN WALL ROUND LONDON. 
 
 London in Caesar's time Its early trade The Wall 
 When built Tiles, sandstone and cement To be built 
 into the new Post Office buildings Other fragments - 117
 
 PART I. 
 
 BY AZURE WAVES.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SOMETHING ABOUT A SCALLOP-SHELL. 
 
 Parasites A Brazilian forest Science begins at home Chalk- 
 covered worms Protected by a sugar-loaf The Sea of 
 London Acorn-shells Dead-men's-fingers A sea-flower 
 A Utopian Commonwealth. 
 
 HAVE you ever noticed the many peculiar growths 
 which cover and thrive upon the exterior of 
 the scallop shell ? Some of them are most beautiful 
 in shape and colour. Many an one has eaten dozens 
 of scallops, at the same time heeding not in the slight- 
 est degree, perhaps, the brilliant artistic shell with which 
 each individual has clothed itself, and the burden of 
 parasites which it has been compelled to bear upon its 
 back. They are instances of those many things which, 
 so often present to our eyes, are yet invisible to our 
 senses, at least until they are absolutely and specially 
 pointed out to us. 
 
 There is a perfect colony of life growing upon a 
 poor scallop's back, and indeed many a colony of 
 colonies, for some individuals, as we shall see, are 
 communities in themselves.
 
 4 Something about a Scallop-shell. 
 
 Let us purchase a specimen from the fisherman's 
 barrow at our door, fresh from the ocean, and with 
 its exterior plumage complete. We will neglect the 
 scallop itself and pay our attention to one or two of 
 the parasitical growths upon its shell. Truly wonder- 
 ful parasites they are, too. Darwin speaks in one of 
 his works of vegetable parasites, which, two feet in 
 circumference, grow alongside of, and finally strangle, 
 the enormous and luxuriant trees of a Brazilian forest. 
 But the external growths of a scallop-shell are just as 
 wonderful, and we need not go so far afield, but 
 stay rather and search about upon our own sea- 
 shore. 
 
 The first thing which will attract our notice are the 
 many long worm-looking creatures, which wind and 
 twist about in all sorts of contorted shapes over the 
 surface of the shell. They look like worms which, 
 when in the act of wriggling, had suddenly become 
 petrified into long whitish chalky tubes of hard stony 
 matter, so natural in form do they look. These 
 tubes are the homes of little worm-like animals known 
 as the serpulce. They are found growing upon rocks, 
 shells, stones ; in fact, upon anything which will give 
 them a sure footing. An oyster will often be found 
 actually covered by them. They collect from the 
 water tiny particles of lime, and place atom to atom, 
 as the bricklayer places brick to brick when building a 
 house. 
 
 When living, a serpula is seen as a crown or tuft of
 
 Something about a Scallop-shell. 5 
 
 hairy processes projecting from the shelly tube. These 
 hairy filaments are really the means by which it strains 
 from the water the tiny bubbles of air which it breathes, 
 each filament being provided with still finer hairs, or 
 what are known as vibrating cilia. 
 
 When the little animal is obliged to place itself in 
 a state of defence, it withdraws within its tube. Now, 
 one of its breathing filaments carries at the end of it a 
 structure in the shape of an inverted cone, or a sugar- 
 loaf turned upside down. When the animal therefore 
 feels so inclined it withdraws itself within its shelly 
 tube, and, by the use of the conical plug, or operculum 
 as it is called, it effectually closes itself to all comers. 
 This is indeed a most wonderful and satisfactory 
 means of protection for what might otherwise be so 
 defenceless an animal. 
 
 Everyone is no doubt acquainted with the great bed 
 of clay on which so much of London is situated, and 
 which is known, therefore, as the " London Clay." 
 This is proved by its fossil contents to have been de- 
 posited at the bottom of a fairly deep sea. The bed 
 is as much as 500 feet thick, and whilst, therefore, 
 this mass of clay was accumulating, the whole of the 
 site of the great city was far beneath the waters of the 
 sea. Now in the Sea of London these little animals, 
 these same serpulae, existed, just as their descendants 
 do now on our coasts. In a similar way they then 
 covered the oysters and other shells which existed in 
 the ancient seas, and they are proved by their fossils to
 
 6 Something about a Scallop-shell. 
 
 have lived in as great profusion as that in which they 
 do now. 
 
 In close alliance to this animal is one which is just 
 as familiar, being well known as the " acorn-shell," 
 (balanus). This is also to be seen on our scallop's 
 back, but not in such prolific numbers as when seen 
 on the piles of bridges, etc. Look around the piles 
 of any of the piers around our coasts when the tide is 
 out, and you will at once notice, if you have not done 
 so already, that the lower parts, which are covered at 
 high tide by the water, are studded with a white 
 chalky layer of tubercle-like shells, each perhaps a 
 quarter of an inch in diameter. These are the acorn- 
 shells, the abode of the little balani. 
 
 They are very similar in structure to the serpulse, 
 but instead of being closed by a plug, they possess 
 two flaps of hard shell-like material which fall over 
 and shut the little animal up within. When you 
 examine the animal at low water, you will find, on 
 looking in, that his shell-door is shut, and not till he 
 feels or hears the water splashing about him will he 
 open his door and extend his crown of tiny filamentous 
 branchiae to catch the still tinier animalcules which 
 swarm in the water, and which form his staple food. 
 
 But now another interesting growth forces itself 
 upon our attention. What are these indiarubbery 
 masses of living flesh, which seem to cover so great a 
 part of the shell of the scallop ? Everyone must have 
 noticed them. They are called ' dead-men's-fingers,'
 
 Something about a Scallop-shell. 7 
 
 but they are no more dead when in their native 
 element than the scallop itself. 
 
 They are generally of a bright orange colour, 
 and they seem to us to have a texture something 
 between that of a sponge and a piece of indiarubber. 
 Zoologically they are of the family alcyonida ; order, 
 alcyonaria; class, actinozoa ; sub-kingdom, cxknterata. 
 Now, to the actinozoa belong all the corals and sea- 
 anemones, and indeed the dead-men's-fingers bear a 
 great resemblance to both of these, although at first 
 sight one would scarcely think so. The mass, as we 
 find it on the scallop, is but the abode of the animal, 
 just as the hard corallum is but the home, or, as in 
 some cases, the back-bone of the coral polype (not 
 insect, mind, for the coral is not an insect). The 
 apparent difference then is simply in the style of 
 architecture which each builds up. 
 
 They are often called ' compound animals,' because, 
 in the case of the dead-men's-fingers, each little pore 
 protrudes a flower-like animal, sometimes of brilliant 
 colouring, and these are all organically connected with 
 one another. It is as if one house contained them all, 
 but each individual, having its own particular room, is 
 tied down to that room, and can in no way interfere 
 with its next-door neighbour. Everything which one 
 eats benefits the whole community. No selfishness 
 has a place there, no oppression of the weak, no 
 ' survival of the fittest ' laws reign there ; what is good 
 for one is good for all ; liberty, fraternity, and equality
 
 8 
 
 Something about a Scallop-shell. 
 
 reign supreme, and thus in the lower animal kingdom 
 we find that ideal commonwealth which man is con- 
 tinually striving for, but which, like an ignis fatuus, 
 retreats the more as he thinks he approaches it.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 WHAT IS WATER ? HOW GEOLOGICAL STRATA ARE 
 DEPOSITED. 
 
 Water Its composition Saltness of the Dead Sea An 
 anemone's plight A fairy's hand How to make a salt-water 
 bath Suspension Solution. 
 
 SEE yon billow come bounding in with almost irre- 
 sistible force ; see yon breaker dashing itself to 
 fragments on the stony beach. Look before you and see 
 the wide stretch of ocean, which extends far beyond 
 the reach of our narrow view, conjure up to your mind 
 the myriads of molecules of water which, rolling and 
 tumbling in loose contact with each other, go to make 
 up the vast expanse of the waters of the ocean ; and 
 then bear in mind that every drop of water is com- 
 posed of two gases united chemically in certain fixed 
 proportions, and that, therefore, the whole of the 
 visible ocean could be decomposed into invisible gases ; 
 the sea then appears in a new light, as one of the 
 most wonderful phenomena of nature with which we
 
 io What is Water ? 
 
 are familiar, and the contemplation of its inner in- 
 visible life serves perhaps to remove the apathy and 
 carelessness to its benefits which its constant presence 
 brings about in those who live permanently in proximity 
 to it. The gases of which pure water is composed 
 are hydrogen and oxygen. These are always present 
 in wonderfully exact proportions, viz., sixteen times 
 by weight of oxygen to two of hydrogen. Perfectly 
 pure water is, however, seldom found in a natural 
 state. Rain water which falls in the open country is 
 perhaps its purest form, that falling in towns being 
 contaminated by carbonic acid, ammonia, etc., which 
 are present in the air through which it falls, and which 
 it dissolves. But sea water, with which we are spe- 
 cially concerned, is water which has collected in the 
 lowest parts of the earth's surface, and towards which, 
 therefore, all water tends to flow from the higher 
 grounds. In the course of its flow it dissolves many 
 impurities, these being known to chemists as 
 ' salts,' for although we apply the term ( salt ' com- 
 monly to the ordinary table condiment, we must bear 
 in mind that there are many series of salts, far removed 
 from one another in point of composition, and that 
 common salt, or chloride of sodium, is only one of 
 many. We can therefore easily understand how 
 thoroughly salt a stream would become after travers- 
 ing certain districts. The Dead Sea receives the 
 waters of the river Jordan and its tributaries, and with 
 them the scourings of the hills, to a great extent dis-
 
 What is Water? n 
 
 solved in them. The lake has no outlet. The sun, 
 beating down on the surface, evaporates large quanti- 
 ties of water, but the salts remain behind, and as a 
 consequence the water becomes more impregnated 
 every year. This, as is well-known, is shown in a 
 striking way by the buoyant properties of the waters 
 of the lake as compared with those of fresh water. 
 
 A piece of cork, floating upon the surface of water, 
 will bear a certain weight upon it ; so in a similar way 
 many tiny molecules of salt dissolved in water will add 
 materially to its buoyancy. The salt gives to water a 
 higher specific gravity than that which it possesses 
 when pure ; in other words, makes salt water to be 
 heavier, bulk for bulk, than when it is in a pure state. 
 
 I remember, when a boy at school, having a living 
 anemone in my possession. It had been captured at 
 Black Rock, near Brighton. I wished to give it a 
 change of sea-water, so proceeded to manufacture it, as 
 I thought, by dissolving common salt in fresh water. 
 Although this gave me ,r#//-water, it certainly did not 
 give me sea-water, and this the poor anemone soon 
 found out. To make sea-water it would be necessary 
 to prepare a quantity of each of those salts which 
 are found in the sea, then to mix them up in the 
 proportions in which they there exist, and finally to 
 dissolve them in fresh water. Even then we might not 
 get a satisfactory result, in consequence of the minute 
 germs of life which are always present in sea-water, 
 and which it would be almost impossible to transport
 
 12 What is Water? 
 
 But there is one way by which everybody might 
 have a supply of very fair sea-water, and for which 
 there would be no necessity to prepare one's own salt 
 (or rather salts). 
 
 When crossing the channel, one very hot May day, 
 as our vessel approached the French coast, we ex- 
 perienced somewhat rougher weather than that which 
 had previously prevailed. Suddenly a large wave 
 came along, drenching the deck with its spray. In a 
 few seconds it had thoroughly dried up. But it had 
 left something in its place. Look at the glistening 
 and shining crystals which cover the deck where this 
 wonderful tongue of the wave had kissed. Surely 
 'twas the hand of a fairy in disguise, which had raised 
 itself from the ocean, to leave us such a beautiful 
 deposit, reflecting and glancing back the rays of the 
 mid-day sun ! These crystals were the salts of the 
 ocean which had been left in the moisture which 
 had been deserted by the retiring wave. The sun's 
 rays had greedily sucked up, by evaporation, all the 
 moisture on the deck, and had left these crystals 
 behind. Remove them quickly into a more shady 
 place before old Sol returns to make another meal of 
 them, and to cause them to disappear as rapidly as 
 they came. 
 
 It will be seen, therefore, that should you wish to 
 have a sea-water bath without bathing in the sea, it is 
 only necessary to go down to the beach on a hot 
 summer's day, take with you an ordinary tea-tray,
 
 What is Water? 13 
 
 fill it with a thin layer of sea-water, and leave it ex- 
 posed to the rays of the sun. As soon as the water 
 has evaporated, collect the salt left behind and refill 
 with a fresh layer of sea-water. Collect after evapora- 
 tion, and continue as long as perhaps your patience will 
 allow you to do so. In this way ' sea-salt ' can be had 
 at a minimum of cost, and in a maximum of quantity. 
 It may be asked, if sea-water contains so much of 
 these different kinds of salts, why are they not deposited 
 in layers or strata at the bottom of the sea, in the 
 same way as geologists tell us that strata of clay and sand 
 are being laid down in our estuaries and seas, and as, 
 for instance, the stratified rocks of the Weald and the 
 Chalk Downs have been laid down in the remote ages 
 of the past ? 
 
 It is because water is capable of containing matter 
 foreign to itself in two distinct ways. 
 
 When a stream running from a high to a low 
 level is suddenly checked in its course, perhaps by its 
 entry into a tranquil lake, it loses its force, and im- 
 mediately matter is deposited at its entrance into the 
 lake. This matter was simply held in suspension in 
 the water, by reason of the velocity which the current 
 possessed, but gradually sank as the stream lost that 
 velocity. When matter previously held in this way 
 in suspension is deposited, geological strata are 
 formed. 
 
 But this is very different to the way in which sea- 
 water holds its salts. They have been dissolved by
 
 14 What is Water? 
 
 the water, as sugar would be dissolved by a cup of 
 tea, and are said to be held in solution, and whether 
 the water be running or whether it be stagnant they 
 remain dissolved (at least until the water containing 
 them comes into contact with other bodies for which 
 they have a greater chemical affinity than they have for 
 water, when, uniting chemically with the new body, 
 they are often precipitated). 
 
 Because the salts are held in solution, then, by sea- 
 water they are not deposited, but mud and sand are 
 deposited, because these are only held in suspension. 
 When, however, the water of sea-water is removed by 
 evaporation caused by the sun's heat, the salts are 
 chemically precipitated, and these again may be 
 dissolved in fresh water when required for bathing and 
 other purposes. 
 
 The sand on the shore of a chalk district had been 
 held in suspension by the sea when being ground down 
 and transferred as flint from the chalk cliff, but the 
 flint itself was no doubt held in solution in the sea of 
 the chalk age, and precipitated in the fissures and 
 crevices of the chalk where we now find it, perhaps in 
 a similar way to that process now going on in Iceland, 
 where the geysers deposit the crystals around their 
 basin while the water is passing off in the shape of 
 steam. 
 
 Sand, then, is simply mechanically deposited from 
 suspension. Flint, on the other hand, is the repre- 
 sentative of precipitation from solution.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 POWDERED WATER. 
 
 Ducks and drakes Explanation The oyster A delicacy? 
 Nineteen dozen a day The maggoty-cheese eater Pearls 
 Natural causes Vanity. 
 
 PURE water when in small quantities is an almost 
 colourless liquid. In larger quantities it assumes 
 a pale bluish tint. Sea-water varies from a blue to a 
 deep green. Why, then, it may be asked, is foam 
 white? 
 
 If you pound transparent glass in a mortar, if you 
 crush loaf sugar, or even quartz crystals, the same 
 result occurs ; transparency gives place to opacity ; 
 the glass pounded assumes a chalky colour, and the 
 same thing results in the cases of the sugar and quartz 
 crystals. A sea wave, consisting of partially transparent 
 water, dashes itself to fragments on the beach, and 
 brings itself into a similar condition to that of finely 
 divided glass powder when crushed in a mortar. The 
 reason for this chalky whiteness, is, that instead of the
 
 1 6 Powdered Water. 
 
 surface of the wave or of the broken glass being in one 
 plane, and so reflecting the diffused light from that one 
 plane, each little particle of glass or water into which 
 the whole has been broken up reflects light from its 
 own particular surface in its own particular plane ; 
 thus we have light reflected in every direction, and 
 from the multiplicity of cross rays a confused mass of 
 whiteness is produced. This then, is, why the foam 
 of the sea is white. 
 
 I suppose every little boy and girl has played at 
 ' ducks and drakes ' when staying at the seaside. It 
 will not be out of place to attempt a scientific explana- 
 tion of even such a childish amusement as this. A 
 thin stone or slate, with somewhat of a flat surface at 
 least on one side, is thrown parallel to the surface 
 of the water at but a few inches above the surface. 
 Acted on by gravity, which attracts everything towards 
 the centre of the earth, the stone, which should be 
 thrown with its flattest surface next to the water, sinks 
 and strikes as if to enter it at a very acute angle. But 
 the flat surface refuses to allow the stone to enter the 
 water as it would have done had an angular projection 
 first encountered it, and as a consequence, impelled 
 by the force imparted to it by the thrower, it slides along 
 and rebounds from place to place on the water's 
 surface. And when does it sink ? When the attrac- 
 tional gravity overcomes (i) the gradually diminishing 
 force primarily given to it by the thrower ; and (2) the 
 slight sustaining power of the water itself. The
 
 Powdered Water. 17 
 
 higher the thrower stands from the surface of the 
 water, the less successful the throw will be, and the 
 less the number of times of rebound. This is owing 
 to the fact that the stone, in falling to the surface, has 
 more time to accumulate a velocity in sinking towards 
 the surface of the earth, and thus the water surface 
 has momentarily a greater weight to sustain than 
 that of the stone itself, and in a moment it has 
 sunk. 
 
 When the stone meets the surface, thrown from a 
 low level, it gives the surface but a slight weight to 
 sustain, because there it is subjected to a strong force 
 propelling it forward ; but when that force is expended, 
 nothing prevents it sinking but its broad flat surface, 
 and this does not sustain it long. But why does a 
 flat surface sustain it any length of time at all ? For 
 the same reason that a piece of cheese would offer 
 little resistance if cut through by a thin string, whereas 
 a thick one would encounter a good deal of resist- 
 ance ; because, indeed, there is a greater area of 
 resistance exposed to the water. A piece of slate, if 
 placed vertically in the water, would sink like a shot ; 
 but if placed on the water horizontally it would take a 
 considerable time to sink. 
 
 Of all the many species of shell-fish that are found 
 native on our shores, perhaps the oyster is as well 
 known as any among them. The delicacy of its flesh, 
 and the digestibility of the animal, cause it to be in 
 great demand amongst invalids, and gourmands of
 
 1 8 Powdered Water. 
 
 weak digestion. One of the great drawbacks to 
 acquiring a knowledge of the natural history of any 
 particular animal is the feeling akin to disgust which 
 one feels on eating for food one of those very animals 
 which have formed, at some period or other, the sub- 
 ject of one's investigation. For instance, this esteemed 
 delicacy does not taste half so pleasant when one 
 recognises the fact that in eating a dozen oysters one 
 disposes of twelve stomachs, twelve mouths, twelve 
 nerve-ganglions, twelve hearts, and twelve livers and 
 who, I would ask, is satisfied with twelve oysters ? 
 
 The oyster is perhaps the most digestible kind of 
 food known, even more so than bread, which, by-the- 
 bye, in certain forms is decidedly indigestible. It 
 is most nutritious, but containing so small a quantity 
 of nitrogenous matter it is necessary for a man to eat 
 nineteen dozen daily, if he abstain wholly from other 
 food, in order to obtain the necessary quantity of 
 nitrogen. In each oyster one eats, too, the digestion 
 is aided by the bile secreted in the oyster's liver. 
 
 Oysters are often cultivated in what are called 
 ' parks,' and are most prolific, one oyster depositing 
 spat to the extent of about two million individuals. 
 These are, however, considerably thinned by numerous 
 fish which prey upon the young oyster. 
 
 Some people are very fond of cheese in which 
 maggots can be seen roaming about at large. Simi- 
 larly oysters are bred in ' parks ' of stagnant water, 
 offensive with greeny matter, in order that what is
 
 Powdered Water. 19 
 
 virtually a fattening disease may be induced in them, 
 and so brought into a prime condition for the table of 
 the maggoty-cheese-eater and his kin. 
 
 The pearl-oyster, or pintadine, also claims our 
 attention. Although belonging to the oyster family it 
 is of a different genus altogether to that of the common 
 oyster. Pearls are formed when the oyster is in what 
 may be called a diseased state. 
 
 Most people have noticed the glossy, shining sub- 
 stance, iridescent with every colour of the rainbow, 
 which is so often seen on the interior of many of the 
 shells cast upon the beach. The animal secretes this 
 elegant lining of ' nacre,' as it is called, by abstracting 
 the lime which is contained in the ocean. In the pearl- 
 oyster this nacre is familiar as 'mother-of-pearl,' and is 
 a valuable article of commerce. It is secreted, however, 
 by other shells than the pintadine, although perhaps 
 not in such lavish profusion. It is found in good 
 preservation on many fossil shells, especially on the 
 ammonites of the Gault Clay, many good specimens 
 of which are to be found in every collection. The 
 nacreous lining can be obtained by dissolving away 
 the rough outer shell by the action of an acid, or by a 
 process of polishing. 
 
 When a grain of sand or of some foreign substance 
 happens to intrude itself on the domain of the pearl- 
 oyster it is a source of great irritation to him. He, or 
 she, for an oyster is both male and female, having both 
 sexes in itself, forthwith, instead of continuing to add
 
 2O Powdered Water. 
 
 to the nacreous lining of the shell, proceeds to secrete 
 layer after layer of pearly matter around the irritating 
 object, and so smoothes it over with a substance akin 
 to itself. In this way a pearl grows, as many as 150 
 stones having been found in one oyster. This number 
 is, however, exceptional, and far above the average. 
 The Chinese, as is well known, are in the habit of in- 
 troducing various objects into the shell of the living 
 animal with the idea of procuring pearls of a certain 
 shape; these soon become coated, and the shell 
 assumes the appearance of a natural cameo. 
 
 Pearl-oysters are collected at the bottom of the sea 
 by expert divers, who are able to remain under water 
 from thirty to thirty-five seconds without taking breath. 
 The continual strain undergone in their dangerous 
 occupation plays havoc with the constitutions of the 
 divers. They seldom live to old age, and often rise to 
 the surface with the blood flowing from their ears and 
 nostrils. At what a price of human life are the rich 
 bedecked with jewels, and at what a cost, indeed, is 
 the gratification of vanity purchased !
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 WHAT IS A SPONGE? 
 
 As we know it As it lived The skeleton Its flesh Amoeba 
 Convenient organs Ripple-marks Fossils. 
 
 WE all know a sponge when we see it, and can 
 well appreciate its usefulness when we take 
 (as everybody should whose health can bear it) our cold 
 morning bath. We have often seen a small specimen 
 of a sponge attached to the shells of scallops when 
 they are in season. I wonder if as many know what 
 the animal itself is, how it lives, of what it consists, 
 and how it procures its food. 
 
 Just the same as our body consists of two essential 
 parts, the skeleton and the flesh, so does the sponge 
 consist of the same two parts, the horny skeleton and 
 the sponge-flesh. 
 
 The sponges with which we are so well acquainted 
 are only the skeletons of Spongidce. What then was 
 the animal part ? It consisted of a layer of jelly-like 
 substance (sarcode), which lined the skeleton within
 
 22 What is a Sponge ? 
 
 and without. Everybody knows how a piece of sponge 
 is perforated by numerous apertures and canals ex- 
 tending through and ramifying the mass in every 
 direction. The layer of sponge-flesh covered the 
 horny skeleton and extended through all these rami- 
 fications which we have noticed, giving life to every 
 portion of the mass, and using the skeleton as its 
 support. 
 
 Then, again, what is the sponge-flesh ? 
 
 On invoking the aid of the microscope we find that 
 the flesh is composed of a number of very little 
 Amoebse clustering together, and forming a colony. 
 The Amceba, as you remember, is one of the lowliest 
 representatives of life on the earth. It is nothing but 
 a little drop of jelly or albumen endowed with life. 
 It possesses no mouth, but can conveniently make one 
 in any part of its body near which its food may 
 approach ; it has no arms, but can suddenly manu- 
 facture one in any part that it pleases, wherewith to 
 seize its still more tiny prey. For a heart it has what 
 is known as a contractile vesicle, which does duty in 
 its stead. 
 
 Well, a sponge is an assemblage of these Amoebae. 
 The single Amoeba is enabled to roam about at will, 
 and procure its food. The sponge colony, however, is 
 rooted to the rock, so its food has to be brought to it. 
 This end is obtained by an interesting structure in the 
 sponge. Some of the flesh particles within are pro- 
 vided with little hair-like protuberances. These being
 
 What is a Sponge ? 23 
 
 constantly vibrating, currents are set up in the water 
 canals with which the skeleton is perforated, and in 
 this way particles of food are brought within reach of 
 the stationary colony, by an apparatus which in the 
 free-swimming Amoeba would be unnecessary, simply 
 because it is able to go in search of its own food. 
 
 We see, then, that the sponge of everyday use is 
 only the half of the original structure. Most people 
 will agree that it is the better half. For although 
 albumen, of which its flesh is composed, is all very 
 well for food in the shape of white-of-egg, I am not 
 aware that anybody has at present suggested taking 
 the albumen of the sponge, and using it for the many 
 purposes of cooking to which eggs are put. 
 
 A peculiar fact, however, is that what appear to be 
 shapeless little Amoebae are to be seen in the blood' 
 which flows through our veins. There they throw out 
 their little arms, or pseudopoda, in every direction, and 
 roll and tumble about just the same as their relatives 
 do outside their human home. 
 
 Everybody has noticed the ripple-marks that are 
 found on the sands at low water. They seem as 
 though tiny waves had come rippling in and had 
 suddenly become petrified into sand-ridges. Now 
 although man has lived but a short time, comparatively 
 speaking, on this earth of ours, yet, by the aid of 
 researches into the formation of the rocks beneath 
 us, we are able to go far back in the history of our 
 planet; we can arrive at a period so remote from now,
 
 24 What is a Sponge ? 
 
 as to be long anterior to that when the human race 
 first made its appearance, and there in the sands 
 which were to be found at the bottom of the Carbon- 
 iferous sea, and which have since been consolidated 
 into hard sandstones, you would have found just the 
 same action of the sea making ripples, in exactly the 
 same manner as it does now. So the physical action 
 of the sea went on in those days regardless of the 
 changes which were going on around, and sub- 
 mitted the sands to the same process as that which 
 it does now, in a world of living beings so different to 
 that now existing, that were a Carboniferous human 
 being to come to life now, had such an one ever lived, 
 he would find himself translated to an entirely different 
 sphere to that to which he had been accustomed. 
 What is more, we find that the sea sand-ripples 
 became so hardened that when they were covered up 
 by a fresh layer of sedimentary matter, they retained 
 their shape, and now, after the flow of ages not to be 
 counted, we dig up in our quarries slabs of stone 
 covered by ripple-marks, reminding us that we are 
 walking over an old shore of sand, in a district, perhaps, 
 where the sea has not washed for many hundreds of 
 years. Some beds of sandstone are covered in every 
 layer by these fossil ripple-marks, and are often used 
 as tiles for the roofing of houses. 
 
 Ripple-marks are found in other formations ; in the 
 Wealden Beds in Sussex, at Horsham, Cuckfield, etc., 
 they occur very frequently ; in some of the slabs of
 
 What is a Sponge ? 25 
 
 sandstone of which our pavements are formed we 
 have often noticed the same peculiarity (we must not, 
 however, mistake for it the diagonal cuttings made in 
 the stones in order to prevent the foot slipping). 
 When we next tread upon an uneven curbstone, let us 
 just give it a glance, and we will see if we can recog- 
 nise these ripple-marks.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A NOVEL USE FOR MUSSELS. 
 
 A silk-spinning shell-fish Living cement Wood-borers 
 Sussex coal Lignite or brown coal False hopes The 
 Brighton Spa. 
 
 EVERYBODY is acquainted with the mussels 
 which are seen clustering at the ends of the 
 groynes at our seaside towns. They are always to be 
 found, at low tide, clinging tightly to the wood or iron 
 to which they have attached themselves. Go and 
 watch them when the tide is coming in, and see the 
 waves dashing against them, and threatening every 
 moment to sweep them away. I used to wonder how 
 they could possibly withstand the force of the waves, 
 sufficient oftentimes to knock a human being off his 
 feet. Dislodge a few mussels, and place them in some 
 sheltered spot where the force of the waves is not the 
 strongest. In a few days they will once more be found 
 to have taken root, and to offer considerable resist- 
 ance to being again removed. Why is this ?
 
 A Novel Use for Mussels. 27 
 
 It is because of the power which the mussel pos- 
 sesses of spinning a silk-like web, or byssus, by which 
 it is enabled to cling so tightly to the groynes and the 
 rocks as to resist the ordinary force of the waves in 
 their efforts to remove it. This binding power which 
 the mussels have is by no means useless. When the 
 French engineers set to work on the breakwater at 
 Cherbourg, they invoked the aid of the mussel to assist 
 them. Tons of mussels were transplanted and placed 
 upon the works. To protect themselves from being 
 swept away they spun their byssus, and let go their 
 natural anchor, in this way uniting themselves firmly to 
 the blocks which formed the breakwater, and also to 
 each other. Thus, blocks and mussels were firmly 
 bound together ; and while the mussels congratulated 
 themselves on having withstood the force of the waves, 
 the engineers congratulated themselves on having 
 obtained, at a very cheap price, a firm, though living, 
 cement, in the shape of the poor unconscious mussels. 
 
 Have you ever noticed how closely the wooden 
 piles of the Chain Pier at Brighton are studded with 
 iron nails, and has it ever occurred to you to ask the 
 reason of it ? Do the nails strengthen the structure ? 
 Well, they do, in an indirect way. 
 
 There are some terrible little creatures existing in 
 our waters who are exceeding fond of cosily burying 
 themselves in a comfortable nest of wood. These 
 animals are not much to look at, but they have proved 
 themselves to be of alarmingly destructive habits.
 
 28 A Novel Use for Mussels. 
 
 They are known as the (i.) Pholas, or 'piddock,' and 
 (ii.) Limnoria terebrans, a very insignificant animal 
 indeed, but one greatly to be dreaded. The latter, 
 scarcely an eighth of an inch in size, eat their way 
 into any wooden piles that may be immersed in sea- 
 water, and thus open the way for a more terrible 
 pest, viz., the ' ship-worm ' (teredo). When it was 
 found that the piles of the Chain Pier were suffering 
 from the ravages of these little monsters, heads were 
 placed together to find out a way by which to outwit 
 them. To encase the piles in iron would have been a 
 somewhat expensive job, so a plan was hit upon to 
 cover them with broad-headed nails of iron, placed so 
 closely as to allow of no entry for the little bore. 
 Though able to burrow into wood, iron proved itself 
 their match. Hence the reason for the coat of 
 armour which the piles appear to wear. 
 
 Every now and again large lumps of a brown- 
 black material are washed up on the beach in front of 
 the town of Brighton. These are of all sizes, from a 
 rounded fragment of a few inches thick to large slabs 
 of it. It is really a kind of coal. If it had not been 
 tossed about by the sea so unmercifully, but had 
 remained in its former place of deposition, in the 
 course of time it would most likely have become true 
 coal. It has assumed the rounded shape in conse- 
 quence of the continual action of the sea having worn 
 off the jagged corners, and this is also the reason that 
 we scarcely ever find a single stone on the beach
 
 A Novel Use for Mussels. 29 
 
 which possesses a sharp edge. The continual attrition 
 of the flints, one with the other, after they have been 
 washed out of the chalk, has chipped off and 
 rounded the edges, and the tiny pieces so broken off 
 have gone to be pounded still smaller into sand ; thus 
 we might form a collection of beach-stones, and, 
 arranging them according to their size, show that the 
 boulder and the grain of sand are but the extreme 
 gradations of one and the same series. This lignite, 
 as it is sometimes called, or, as it is better known, 
 surturbrand, was used at one time by the fishermen 
 for burning as fuel. It, however, gave out such an 
 offensive sulphurous odour that a by-law was passed 
 prohibiting the fishermen from using it. 
 
 It had its origin in the beds which formed the 
 Brighton Cliffs, when they were exposed to the action 
 of the sea, and before the Cliff Formation was hidden 
 behind a wall of concrete. Now, however, it is to be 
 found in the shape of a bed of lignite running under 
 Furze Hill. Sir Roderick Murchison paid a visit to 
 this deposit in 1850, and mentioned it in his writings 
 as being impregnated with iron pyrites (iron sulphide) 
 and giving rise to the neighbouring Chalybeate of 
 Wick. Bright indeed were the hopes that were raised 
 that this lignite might prove a veritable coal-mine, but 
 they were only to be dashed to the ground, even as 
 those which were raised concerning the lignite of the 
 Wealden sands at Bexhill. Mr. Montague Phillips 
 stated that he traced the Furze Hill lignite for a dis-
 
 30 A Novel Use for Mussels. 
 
 tance of 1,370 feet, south to north, and it was doubt- 
 less formerly connected with similar beds at Newhaven 
 and Bognor. 
 
 In many pieces of surturbrand that have been cast 
 up, as also in chalk boulders that have been in the 
 water some time, we find the ravages of our friends 
 the borers, but this time it is the work of the teredo 
 navalis, or ship-worm. These perforations will be 
 found to have been made as a rule in parallel direc- 
 tions, literally riddling the substance which has been 
 bored. His companion borer, the Pholas, bores in 
 all directions, having no hesitation in crossing his 
 neighbour's path, without even asking his permission, 
 or begging his pardon. 
 
 Fossil wood is found plentifully in the London Clay, 
 bored in a very similar manner by a species of the 
 ship-worm, and doubtless those which infest and de- 
 stroy the timbers of ships and piers in the present day, 
 are direct lineal descendants of those which ages ago 
 found their snug homes in the heart of the wood 
 which grew in the tropical forests of the Eocene age.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ABOUT CLAWS AND STONES. 
 
 A fishwife's belief It would not grow Flint crystals The 
 worse for wear Natural assortment of the beach and sand. 
 
 THERE was once an old woman who lived by the 
 sea, who earned her livelihood by the sale of 
 small lobsters, crabs, and other shell-fish which she 
 picked up on the sea-shore. One day her little boy 
 met with a misfortune. By some means or other one 
 of his fingers had been chopped off, and he went home 
 crying to his mother. The doctor was interviewed, 
 the boy's hand was bandaged up, but the mother 
 became impatient with the slow progress the finger 
 made, and, visiting the doctor a second time, gravely 
 informed him that the finger 'had not yet begun to 
 grow again.' Now the old woman was evidently 
 mistaking the zoological characteristics of homo sapiens, 
 or the human being, for 1 those of homarus vulgarus, 
 the common lobster. Most people are aware that the 
 lobster, when it loses a limb, has the power of pro-
 
 32 About Claws and Stones. 
 
 ducing another one in its place. This power of re- 
 production is not confined to the lobster, but is com- 
 mon to other crustaceans. If a lobster can grow a 
 fresh limb in place of a lost one, thought the old 
 woman, why should not her boy's finger grow again in 
 a similar fashion ? 
 
 She was reasoning from analogy, but analogy 
 played her false. 
 
 If one were to take a ramble along the shore and 
 make a collection of nothing but various kinds of 
 stones, a very interesting number of varieties would be 
 found. The great body of stones and pebbles one 
 finds on the beaches around the south coast are de- 
 rived from the bands of flints which intersect the chalk 
 cliffs. Rolled and tossed by the ocean, they have been 
 worn into their present rounded forms, varying from 
 those of the size of a pea to large heavy boulders. Flints 
 are composed of a substance known to the chemist 
 as silica. Many of the most valuable of our precious 
 stones are composed of exactly the same material, for 
 instance, amethyst, onyx, cat's-eye, etc. Quartz also 
 has the same chemical composition, so that we see that 
 the common substance known as flint has an exact 
 similarity of composition with that of some of the rarer 
 stones. Who, too, has not found occasionally in the 
 heart of a stone, a beautiful crystallized centre ? 
 These crystals have been prepared in Nature's own 
 laboratory from the surrounding mass of flint. 
 
 A good instance of the action of the sea in round-
 
 About Claws and Stones. 33 
 
 ing off all rough corners and edges, met me a short 
 time since, when at Brighton. I found a piece of whitish 
 granite that had been washed up by the sea, with its 
 edges all rounded off. I should have liked to have 
 thought that it had been washed up Channel from, per- 
 haps, the granite cliffs of Devon or Cornwall. A closer 
 inspection, however, showed that it possessed exactly 
 the same texture and composition as that possessed by 
 the granite which the workmen had used in building 
 the Hove Sea-Wail. It was, in fact, a piece which 
 the labourers had chipped off, and which had 
 been on its travels seawards, and had now returned 
 to be cast up by the sea, decidedly 'the worse for 
 wear.' 
 
 Another stone which I found had, I believe, no 
 connection with any such works of masonry as the 
 above. This was a pebble of gneiss, a rock which 
 does not appear anywhere in the neighbourhood. 
 Gneiss is a primitive rock, and is supposed to have 
 been formed from the disintegration of granite. It 
 possesses the same composition, viz., felspar, quartz, 
 and mica, but instead of its crystals being disseminated 
 irregularly in the mass, they have been deposited in 
 regular layers by the action of water. 
 
 Thus a gneiss (pronounced nice) pebble would show 
 its constituents arranged in regular stratula, and 
 would at once be distinguishable from amorphous 
 granite. This pebble having travelled so long a 
 journey by the locomotive power of the sea, was 
 
 3
 
 34 About Claws and Stones. 
 
 thoroughly rounded, and at first sight was not to be 
 known from an ordinary flint pebble. 
 
 It is interesting to note the way in which beach is 
 sorted by the sea. When in Devonshire last year, I 
 collected specimens of various sizes of pebbles from 
 the streams flowing from off Dartmoor. These 
 pebbles had been formed by the decomposition of the 
 granite. On shaking them all up together, I noticed 
 that the very small ones had sunk to the bottom, 
 while the larger ones lay upon the surface of the 
 rest. In this way the beach seems sifted and sorted. 
 We find, as a rule, the larger boulders furthest 
 removed from low-water mark, whilst next to them 
 appear those of medium size, gradually giving way, 
 as we approach the sands, to the very small beach. 
 Beneath them, we come finally to the smallest and 
 finest of all, viz., the sand, and this is composed of 
 exactly the same material as flints, but has under- 
 gone the most minute subdivision of all by the con- 
 tinual trituration caused by the waves.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A CHAPTER ON THE SEA-URCHIN. 
 
 A soft body Radiating spines Fossil urchins Tube-feet and 
 suckers ' Hedgehog- skin ' Ingenious power of growth 
 Shell composed of numerous plates. 
 
 THERE are many creatures inhabiting the sea with 
 which we are, perhaps, more familiar than the 
 sea-urchin, yet there are few of us who have not picked 
 up specimens of the animal when at the seaside, or 
 found some of its empty egg-shaped shells amongst 
 the stones of the beach. It can be more successfully 
 sought for after a storm, for then it has been forcibly 
 removed from the deeper water which it finds more 
 congenial to its tastes. When thus found it generally 
 still possesses complete both the soft body inside, and 
 the hard radiating spines attached to the shell outside. 
 The flesh of some species is said to be in flavour not 
 unlike that of an ordinary chicken's egg, and it is, 
 therefore, sometimes known as the sea-egg. The 
 flattened shape of most individuals, however, rather 
 
 32
 
 36 A Chapter on the Sea-urchin. 
 
 suggests a likeness to a crown or diadem than to an 
 egg, and advantage has been taken of this to call a 
 well-known fossil-urchin by the name of diadema, for, 
 of course, we must remember that the ancestors of 
 those now living existed in ages a long, long time ago. 
 Most people have seen sea-urchins' shells which have 
 been dug out of the chalk. Every museum collection 
 has specimens of them, and in some cases they have 
 become petrified both inside and outside, and now 
 each one consists of nothing but a heavy lump of flint. 
 The flint has taken the exact form of the animal, and 
 we see the same markings on its shell as those which 
 we see on the specimen just recently taken from the 
 water. 
 
 The creature seems to be of a very harmless dis- 
 position, and yet it is obliged to wage merciless war 
 upon its companions in the sea in order to supply its 
 daily wants. Worms, crustaceans, and small molluscs 
 constitute the principal portion of its food, and it 
 seems to have a strange power of inducing a kind of 
 paralysis in its prey, which it seizes by means of the 
 tube-feet which we shall mention presently. An urchin 
 was once seen to capture a small crab, and fixing its 
 teeth and suckers into the soft parts of the animal, 
 held it in a seeming state of paralysis until it became 
 sufficiently weak to allow of the sea-urchin enjoying an 
 uninterrupted meal. 
 
 Its shell and appendages are wonderful specimens 
 of mechanism and architecture. On cutting the shell
 
 A Chapter on the Sea-urchin. 37 
 
 in half and looking at its inner surface, it is seen to 
 consist of numerous regularly arranged plates, in shape 
 something like a small domino with the four corners 
 cut off, generally being octagonal in form. These plates 
 are dovetailed into one another by their angular pro- 
 jections, but are arranged in vertical rows reaching 
 from the summit to the mouth at the base of the shell. 
 Five of the rows consist of large, and five of small plates, 
 and these are arranged alternately with one another. 
 Thus the shell is formed of ten vertical zones of plates, 
 the manner in which they are arranged reminding one 
 of the appearance presented by the surface on the 
 school-globes, being divided into a number of zones by 
 the meridians of longitude. 
 
 We will, first of all, deal with those zones consisting 
 of the smaller-sized plates. If we take an empty shell 
 and hold it in front of a bright light, we see that near 
 the edges of each vertical zone it is perforated by a 
 double row of tiny holes. Through these little aper- 
 tures the animal, when alive, had the power of putting 
 forth what are known as ' tube-feet ' ; these were well 
 supplied with muscles, and each one carried at its 
 extremity a sucker, by which it could cling tightly 
 to the rocks over which it wished to pass. By this 
 means it was enabled to pull itself forward in the 
 direction required. In one case a sea-urchin was seen 
 crawling up the perpendicular glass of an aquarium, 
 such was the power of its suckers. As, too, the feet 
 were well supplied with nerves, there is no doubt it
 
 38 A Chapter on the Sea-urchin. 
 
 could literally ' feel its way/ and so assist its eye-spots 
 in surveying its path. The tube-feet are exceedingly 
 numerous. In a specimen examined sixty holes were 
 counted in the shell in each vertical row of plates. 
 As there were ten double rows of holes, there could 
 have been no less than 1,200 tube-feet which the 
 creature was able to protrude ; and in speaking of 
 these we cannot but be struck with the similar power 
 possessed by the tiny unorganized foraminifera, whose 
 shells are perforated by numerous holes, through 
 which they are able to protrude their little pseu- 
 dopodia. 
 
 The living creature is assisted considerably, too, in 
 its mode of progression by the spines to which we have 
 before referred, and which are distributed over the 
 exterior of the shell, especially on the large zones. 
 The zoological class to which the creature belongs, 
 viz., echinodermata, literally translated, means ' hedge- 
 hog-skin,' and this name conveys a very good impres- 
 sion of the appearance presented by the spine-covered 
 shell of the sea-urchin. The spines project like the 
 quills of a hedgehog, and are movable by special 
 muscles attached to them. They are capable of a 
 wide range of movement, being affixed to the shell 
 by means of a ' ball and socket joint.' If you close 
 the fist and spread your remaining hand closely over it, 
 you have a very good illustration of what is meant by 
 this, the closed fist representing one of the tubercles 
 with which the shell is studded, and from which the
 
 A Chapter on the Sea-urchin. 39 
 
 spines project, the hand into which the fist fitted 
 being the foot of the particular spine proper to it. 
 
 Add to these means of progression the fact that 
 some of the spines terminate in a three-fingered prong 
 which clasps the seaweed as the creature moves along, 
 and it will be seen that it is not the stationary animal 
 which it would appear at first sight to be. 
 
 As the animal grows with increasing years, it would 
 almost seem that the brittle shell which encased it 
 would break by reason of the pressure inside. It is, 
 however, provided with the necessary power of growth 
 to meet the requirements of the growing animal, and 
 this power is a wonderful provision, which, in order to 
 retain the egg-shape of the shell, allows of the growth 
 of each individual plate of which its zones consist, by 
 the deposition of calcareous matter at every edge, 
 and, therefore, the contemporaneous enlargement of 
 every portion of the shell. In the specimen referred 
 to, each vertical zone consisted of forty hexagonal 
 plates. There being ten zones, large and small, there 
 must have been 400 plates which formed the shell. 
 We can well understand how wonderfully the egg- 
 shape of the shell is preserved by the gradual en- 
 largement of each individual plate. 
 
 The sea-urchin can bury itself in the sand with the 
 greatest ease, by means of its spines ; and by the aid 
 of the teeth, five in number, which surround the 
 mouth, it is enabled to bore into the hardest rock, 
 and, there ensconced, bid defiance to all pursuers.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE STARFISH. 
 
 On its back Ten rows of feet Its power of renovation when 
 mutilated Stars and comets Sea-cucumbers Lily encrinites. 
 
 THERE are few objects more common on the sea- 
 shore than the five-fingered starfish, and no one 
 can ramble along a quarter of a mile of coast without 
 meeting, perhaps motionless and seemingly lifeless, 
 this gaudy, orange-coloured, terrestrial star. Watch it 
 for a few minutes, and unless it has been deserted by 
 the tide for too long a space of time and has therefore 
 become dried and stiff, you will most likely have the 
 satisfaction of seeing it move. Its shape is very con- 
 venient for locomotion, as it can move off in any 
 direction it pleases without having to turn itself about. 
 Now, by what means does the creature move ? Just 
 as it is starting, suddenly throw it over on its face. 
 You will at once notice a number of short worm-like 
 tubes, which are continually feeling around as if trying 
 to grasp something. These tubes, or ambulacra as
 
 A Few Words about the Starfish. 41 
 
 they are called, bear a close resemblance to the tube- 
 feet which we found protruding through the shell of 
 the sea-urchin, and the manner in which they are used, 
 and the source whence they come, are in both cases 
 the same. On the shell of the sea-urchin, it will be 
 remembered, we found ten distinct rows of tubes, 
 which were pushed out from the holes in the shell. 
 In the starfish we now find that its five rays are 
 admirably fitted to receive ten similar rows ; and when 
 we turn the fish on its back we see that it has two of 
 these rows on each of its fingers, one row on each side. 
 It makes use of these tube-feet to move itself along, 
 and we can see it struggling on its back, and waving 
 its many feet to and fro in its vain efforts to right itself. 
 The feet are not always distinctly visible. When 
 first turned over on its back, perhaps nothing is seen 
 of them, and in their place appears only a shiny mass 
 of jelly-like substance. Gradually, however, they 
 become unfolded, and each assumes its worm-like 
 form. How is this? It is because at the base of 
 each foot there is a little globular-shaped sac, filled 
 with a watery liquid, and each of these is connected 
 with its neighbour. When the animal wishes to put 
 out its little feet it causes all the little globular sacs to 
 contract, and the result of this is that the watery liquid 
 is forced into the feet, which then expand and stand 
 out. When the sacs again enlarge, the liquid is with- 
 drawn from the feet, so that they become limp, and 
 droop into their former motionless condition.
 
 42 A Few Words about the Starfish. 
 
 The starfish is an inveterate enemy of the fisherfolk. 
 It can strangely scent prey from afar, although no 
 organs of scent or hearing have been discovered. 
 When a bait is lowered into the sea it attaches itself 
 -to it, and the angler that finds he has taken the 
 trouble to draw in his line only to find the five-fingers 
 at the end of it, vents his anger on the animal by 
 mutilating it, and, tearing it across, casts it back into 
 the ocean. It will, however, bear this mutilation with 
 equanimity, for where before it was but one fish, now 
 there will be two. Each half will proceed to grow the 
 requisite number of limbs it has lost, and enjoy two- 
 fold its humble life. The lower we get in the scale of 
 life the more pronounced do we find this wonderful 
 power of reproducing a lost limb, or other organ.* 
 When walking on the sands at Felixstowe, I discovered 
 a small starfish which had, young as it was, already 
 lost one of its fingers, but a new one had commenced 
 to grow in its place, and it looked somewhat comical 
 to see the fifth only about half the length of the re- 
 maining four. 
 
 In some parts of the Indian Ocean it is common 
 to find the fish producing four rays at the extremity 
 of another, giving not so much the appearance of a 
 star as of a comet. This may be partially owing to 
 the fact that the stomach, which is situated in the 
 centre immediately above the mouth, has prolonga- 
 tions into each of the arms, and each arm as it was 
 torn off carried with it an accompanying portion of
 
 A Few Words about the Starfish. 43 
 
 stomach. In other instances the arms themselves 
 have subdivided into two shorter arms, and in such a 
 case the symmetry of the star became of course lost. 
 Specimens exhibiting this feature can be seen in the 
 British Museum. 
 
 Although the starfish does not possess the hard 
 shell-covering which protects the urchin, it also belongs 
 to the ' hedgehog-skin ' class. The skin, as everyone 
 knows, is covered by a number of jagged pieces of lime, 
 the spicules and spines, which give it a rough uneven 
 surface, and which answer to the plates of lime which 
 constitute the shell in the sea-urchin. Throughout 
 the whole sub-kingdom, ' Echinodermata,' the animals 
 are covered by these spicules and spines of lime, most 
 completely in the case of the urchins, and least in 
 holothuroidea, the sea-cucumbers, where they are 
 scattered very sparingly over the skin. 
 
 The starfish is decidedly voracious, and can eat even 
 oysters. When, however, it attacks one that is too 
 large for its stomach, it inverts this organ over it, and 
 is able to compel the mollusc to open its shell, when 
 it easily falls a prey to its captor. 
 
 In times now long past, especially in the seas existing 
 when our great coal-beds were laid down, a peculiar 
 kind of starfish was abundant, which was fixed to the 
 rocks by a stalk consisting of plates of bone. There it 
 grew and sent out branches and twigs, each one ending 
 with a beautiful long-fingered starfish. They are known 
 as crinoids or encrinites, from the Greek word krinon,
 
 44 A Few Words about the Starfish. 
 
 a lily, since when partially open they presented the ap- 
 pearance of a beautiful lily. These stalked starfishes 
 were so plentiful in the seas that hundreds of them are 
 now seen imbedded as fossils in the hardest rocks, and 
 a number of different species have been discovered. 
 Although then existing in such profusion, there are 
 now living only two or three species of crinoids, so great 
 has been the decrease that has taken place ; and per- 
 haps, in a few hundreds of years, the family will have to 
 be numbered with other animals which have become 
 extinct since the appearance of human beings on the 
 globe. 
 
 Of the starfish itself there are very many species 
 living, and hence we may note there is but little possi- 
 bility of their dying out for many ages.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 COMPOUND ANIMALS. 
 
 Three great classes Their names A sea-fern Its precarious 
 means of subsistence The coral-builders Fossil coral-reefs 
 Sea-mat It encrusts seaweed It is highly organized. 
 
 THE creatures to which Linnaeus applied the name 
 ' animalia composita,' or compound animals, 
 constitute the great bulk of those which were formerly 
 known as zoophytes. A compound animal is an as- 
 semblage either of polypites, or of polypes, or of 
 polypides, these being the terms which have been 
 applied to the individuals of each of the three classes 
 which are made up of this kind of being. Of the first 
 two mentioned, many species are to be found on our 
 own sea-shores, whilst concerning the last, the polype, 
 it may safely be said that although we have not all 
 seen it in a living state, we have heard of the result of 
 its herculean labours in the banks of coral which it 
 has built up in various parts of the world, as well as in 
 the pretty red coral which is so much used in the
 
 46 Compound Animals. 
 
 manufacture of articles of ornament. They are all 
 known as compound animals, since when living they 
 exist in colonies of many thousands of individuals, 
 united to each other either organically, or by the mass 
 of coral to the formation of which all are contributing 
 their share. 
 
 But why, it may be asked, is a distinction made 
 between them, arid why the different names? It is 
 because each of the three classes have organic 
 structures which differ from those of the others, and 
 which have compelled naturalists to separate them and 
 to distinguish between the more highly and more 
 lowly organized amongst them. To begin with the 
 most humble of the three, we have not to go far in 
 order to procure a species belonging to the great 
 class HYDROZOA, whose single individuals are called 
 polyfites, for we must all have noticed the fern-like 
 seaweed which grows on the backs of shell-fish, and 
 which is invariably to be found on the shell of the 
 well-known scallop. There it grows to a height of 
 some five or six inches, sending out branches right and 
 left, and looking not unlike the common garden fern 
 with its leaflets. When examined it will be noticed 
 that both edges of the stem and of the branches are 
 cut up into something resembling the edge of a saw, 
 so that between each part corresponding to its tooth 
 there is a little cavity. In this species, one of the 
 sertularians, each little polypite was situated in one of 
 the cavities, so that when all were filled and the
 
 Compound Animals. 47 
 
 organism was complete, the colony consisted of a large 
 body of individuals congregated together. Yet they 
 were not individuals in every sense. Each one, though 
 isolated and bound down to his little cell, was com- 
 pelled to contribute to the maintenance of the whole 
 colony. The food which it procured from passing 
 currents, went to sustain the whole body, every indi- 
 vidual being in organic connection with the rest by 
 means of the horn-like substance which constitutes the 
 only part remaining when the organism is dead. The 
 polypite itself can well be imagined by taking the 
 common anemone as a model, for, although it had 
 not the same interior arrangements, there was a 
 similarity in its means of obtaining food, namely, by 
 the assistance of a number of tentacles, which engulfed 
 the tiny infusores which came within their reach, and 
 conveyed them to the central mouth. 
 
 In the polype, however, the individual peculiar to the 
 class ACTINOZOA, we have a distinct advance in the 
 organization of the creature. The term is applied to 
 those individuals which go to constitute the colonies 
 known as coral-builders. They are similar in external 
 appearance to those of which we have just spoken, but 
 differ from them in the enjoyment of a stomach 
 distinct from their body-cavity. 
 
 The colossal results brought about by the continual 
 labour of the coral polypes are seen in the numerous 
 groups of islands which stud the Pacific Ocean, and in 
 the extensive hidden coral-reefs which in some parts
 
 48 Compound Animals. 
 
 bound the shores of the great continent of Australia. 
 Although we cannot, however, actually observe 
 their work now going on in our own seas, we have 
 ample proof of their presence in times past, for in 
 some of our geological formations, such as, for instance, 
 the Coral Rag of Oxfordshire, we encounter great 
 banks of coral in a fossilized condition, which are as 
 assuredly the works of polypes as those masses now 
 being formed in tropical seas. So extensive are some 
 of these fossil coral reefs, that they are broken up and 
 used for road-mending ; indeed, so many limestone 
 formations have been found to owe their origin to the 
 working of various species of animalcules, that it has 
 been hazarded by many eminent scientific men that, 
 perhaps, there is no form of limestone, be it chalk, 
 coral rag, or encrinital marble, that has not at some 
 time or other formed part of an organized being, which 
 has been left after death the tenantless hecatomb of a 
 life that has passed away. 
 
 One is sometimes exercised to understand how it is 
 that such apparently differing substances as the 
 ordinary tree-like red coral, and the globular brain- 
 shaped coral which is so often seen in cabinets and 
 on mantel-shelves, can possibly be the production of 
 animals of the same class. To understand this, it 
 must be explained that there are two modes of coral 
 formation, and the distinction is an important one to 
 remember. What is known as red coral was really 
 the internal stem of the animal, and during life it was
 
 Compound Animals. 49 
 
 surrounded by a thin rind of fleshy substance, similar 
 to the manner in which the trunk of a tree is covered 
 by a layer of bark. In this rind were situated the 
 clefts which held the polypes, which were thus entirely 
 isolated from the internal skeleton. In the massive 
 coral, on the other hand, they were encircled by the 
 calcareous skeleton itself, which even took the shape 
 of the polype, and was secreted in the very organs of 
 the animals themselves. Consequently, this kind of 
 coral is full of small holes or clefts, and in these the 
 creatures lived. 
 
 Thus the whole colony in both kinds was nothing 
 but a congregation of minute sea-anemones, the 
 internal organization being in fact the same as that 
 possessed by them. 
 
 When we turn our attention to the third class, the 
 POLYZOA, whose individuals have been termed/0/y/wfcr, 
 we at once enter upon a much higher scale of organiza- 
 tion than that possessed by either the Hydrozoa or 
 the Actinozoa. There is one species common on our 
 shores which serves well to illustrate this important 
 class. Popularly it is known as the ' sea-mat,' techni- 
 cally as the flustra. Oftentimes it is cast up by the 
 waves as a bunch of what is apparently seaweed, grow- 
 ing perhaps from a common root, and sending its 
 leaves upward in the shape of thin ribbon-like stems, 
 to a height of three or four inches. On the other 
 hand, instead of forming stems of its own, it some- 
 times encrusts true seaweed with a thin layer of its 
 
 4
 
 50 Compound Animals. 
 
 cells, covering it in very truth with a ' sea-mat.' Its 
 external appearance suggests that a number of indenta- 
 tions, called sacs, have been punched in the horny 
 membranous tissue of which it consists. If examined 
 under a microscope when alive, from each little sac a 
 cluster of hairs is seen cautiously to come forth. Then, 
 if the coast seems clear, the tentacles themselves 
 creep out, and finally open and expand like a flower. 
 The sacs which contain them seem to overlap one 
 another like the scales of a herring, and at the 
 extremity of each is the narrow slit or orifice from 
 which the creature spreads itself out. Thus their 
 whole external structure suggests an intimate connec- 
 tion with the other compound animals we have men- 
 tioned ; and, indeed, in the result of their labours, the 
 building of their own houses, a great likeness is ex- 
 hibited between them. Theflustra differs, however, 
 so widely from the other two classes, that it has been 
 placed amongst the mollusca (mollis, soft), although 
 forming a humble class in that sub-kingdom. Its 
 high position is at once justified by the fact that, 
 besides possessing the mouth and bag common to the 
 sertularian, each individual possesses a gullet, a 
 gizzard, and a membranous stomach, which is con- 
 nected with the mouth by a distinct alimentary canal. 
 In conclusion, then, we find compound animals are 
 of three classes, differing, indeed, widely in their 
 internal organization, but similar in their external 
 characters, in their precarious mode of subsistence,
 
 Compound Animals. 51 
 
 and above all in their mode of life, which allows of 
 many thousands of individuals, although entirely 
 isolated from each other, still to remain part and 
 parcel of one great organism. 
 
 42
 
 PART II. 
 
 ROCK- WRITTEN STORIES.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A RAMBLE OVER THE DOWNS. 
 
 The Queen of Watering-places Her breezy Downs Nature's 
 Fairy-tales Southdown flocks Shady woods Denudation 
 of the chalk and overlying beds River-drift man Ditchling 
 Beacon A living panorama. 
 
 TO those accustomed to look upon the town of 
 Brighton simply as a pleasant seaside suburb of 
 London, as a place of recreation wherein to recruit 
 one's wasted energies after the bustle and rush of 
 city life, very little appears to be known of the 
 country in the vicinity of the town, and the vast 
 opportunities offered, but lost, to those in search of 
 health and strength, who come to the town without 
 visiting the broad and breezy Downs which encircle 
 it on three sides, and which, with the bracing air 
 which rolls over them and the sense of freedom and 
 latitude that they impart to those who visit them, 
 help to give Brighton a high place in the list of 
 healthy towns. 
 
 Rambles over these pleasant hills will give both
 
 56 A Ramble over the Downs. 
 
 health and pleasure, if one can appreciate Nature, 
 silent yet grand, as exhibited to us in the wonderful 
 Downs of Sussex and Kent ; silent in the grandeur of 
 the lofty rounded heights, grand in the sublime 
 silence she now maintains from internal commotion 
 after the destruction and denudation which she 
 underwent in a past geological age ere she presented 
 herself peaceful and quiet, a lasting evidence of the 
 mighty forces over which she holds sway, and by 
 which she works her wonders. How such a country 
 ramble can be made interesting and entertaining is 
 best known to those who possess a love for, and can 
 appreciate Nature, in whatever branch of natural 
 science his special liking may be. 
 
 To the ordinary pedestrian, who exercises his limbs 
 by a walk across the Downs, nothing, perhaps, is 
 noticed beyond gentle slopes and valleys, stretching 
 as far as the eye can reach, and covered by a short 
 thick herbage, affording excellent pasture-land for the 
 rearing of the well-known Southdown mutton. The 
 geologist takes his ramble, and though he be bent 
 exclusively on geological research, he finds himself 
 taking more and more interest in some kindred, yet 
 entirely different science. He cannot follow his 
 study of the fossjls with which he may meet without, 
 for instance, some acquaintance with the study of 
 zoology. He meets a fossil fish ; he cannot classify 
 it without a knowledge of the ' Pisces.' A fossil leaf is 
 found ; a knowledge of botany is invoked, a new
 
 A Ramble over the Downs. 57 
 
 incentive is given to the pursuit of that study. An 
 impression of an insect meets him ; he finds that 
 insects belong to the class ' Annulosa,' and that they 
 are divided into families according to the structure of 
 their wings. He pursues his inquiries into the insect 
 world, and becomes more and more enraptured with 
 the study of life, past and present, vegetable and 
 animal ; a new incentive is given to his, if not aim- 
 less, oftentimes fruitless walks, and he finds his mind 
 expanding more and more in friendly rivalry with a well- 
 exercised body, developing more and more towards 
 physical health. Nor do his researches stop here. He 
 comes across a piece of flint, a piece of chalk, sand- 
 stone, or limestone. It is not enough that this stone 
 which he has just picked up is a flint ; geology tells 
 him so much. But on analysing it he finds it is pure 
 silica or oxide of silicon? What is silicon? What is an 
 oxide? He finds he must know something of the 
 chemical elements silicon and oxygen ; a stimulant is 
 thus given to the study of chemistry. He, perhaps, 
 finds a lump of galena, or sulphide of lead. It is acted 
 on by gravity in a much greater degree than a piece 
 of chalk or carbonate of lime would be ; chalk takes a 
 scratch more easily than galena, which, therefore, has 
 a greater degree of hardness. Galena appears in 
 a crystalline form ; the variety of carbonate of lime 
 called chalk is amorphous ; chalk is easily decomposed 
 by calcining, galena resists the action of heat more 
 powerfully. To understand these differences he finds
 
 58 A Ramble over the Downs. 
 
 he must have an acquaintance with mineralogy and its 
 kindred science of beautiful forms, crystallography. 
 Thus his mind expands more and more towards a 
 thorough appreciation of the natural sciences, not as 
 so many dissociated branches of knowledge, but each 
 as contributing its quota of interest to the study 
 of Nature as a harmonious combination of varied 
 pursuits, all pointing to a more appreciative under- 
 standing of the birth, life, and decay of the many 
 forms of life which he sees around him ; the 
 generative forces which bring about the birth, the 
 mysterious force of life itself, and the chemical and 
 other forces which are called into play after the 
 failure of the organism to sustain itself longer in the 
 living world. So a study of one phase of nature 
 begets an interest in another, and the geologist 
 becomes a zoologist, a botanist, chemist, and 
 mineralogist in turn. What a vast field is opened, 
 therefore, to the naturalist in his country rambles ! 
 How different his gaze from that of the common 
 sightseer as he looks around him on the field 
 blossoming with wild-flowers, on the sparrow's nest in 
 the hedge, or that of the martin in the holes scooped 
 out in the sides of the sand-pit ; on the boulders 
 which he sees on all sides, each stamped with its own 
 particular sermon ; with what interest does he not 
 regard the huge chalk-pit cut out in the side of the 
 Downs, where he eagerly seizes the opportunity of col- 
 lecting monuments of life as it was lived aeons ago !
 
 A Ramble over the Downs. 59 
 
 Let us, therefore, take a naturalist's ramble across 
 the South Downs, and, with a naturalist's eye, look 
 intently on whatever may cross our path. We have 
 left Brighton, and are travelling in a north-easterly 
 direction towards Lewes, intending to traverse Stanmer 
 Park, now the residence of the son of the late Earl 
 of Chichester, from whom, should we have required 
 it, we might have safely reckoned on a naturalist's 
 interest in a naturalist's rambles. Thence we will 
 cut across the Downs, and so out on to the Weald. 
 With a warm sun overhead and a cool wind at our 
 back, we soon arrive at the pretty village of Stanmer. 
 We then find ourselves ascending the hill towards a 
 thick wood, through which the road we are following 
 leads, but which is soon lost in the wide expanse 
 before us, where all is road, and no road at all. 
 What of this wood through which we pass? It seems 
 to contain representatives of each of the principal 
 divisions of botanical science. We find here such 
 flowerless plants as the ferns, mosses, and lichens;* also, 
 the flowering plants, f viz., (i) those bearing naked or 
 open seeds, as the fir and pine,J and (2) those with 
 closed seed-vessels, as the oak, beech, etc., these 
 latter belonging to that division of plants bearing 
 flowers, or seed-vessels, known as the Dicotyledons, 
 or two seed-lobed plants. Each and every one of 
 these divisions, each and every individual tree, leaf, 
 
 * Cryptogams. t Phanerogams. 
 
 J Gymnosperms. Angiosperms.
 
 60 A Ramble over the Downs. 
 
 fern, or flower, will furnish food for philosophy to 
 the thoughtful rambler. To him who has a pre- 
 dilection for the observation of Nature, it will only 
 serve to create a more keen appetite to master all 
 that is known and all that can be learnt that has 
 reference to that study. How plentifully the wild 
 strawberry clusters amongst the undergrowth of the 
 banks on either side of our path, shooting out its 
 tendrils and taking fresh root, reminding one of 
 the banyan tree, of which we have all read, but which, 
 perhaps, very few have seen. 
 
 Before leaving the wood through which we are now 
 passing, it might be as well to inquire why we find, 
 scattered here and there along the range of Downs, 
 these detached clumps of trees. We have been led to 
 believe that the depth of earth above the chalk, never 
 exceeding but a few inches, gave rise only to the 
 short sweet herbage on which our Southdown flocks 
 love to feed. To answer this we must enter somewhat 
 into the geological history of the Downs. 
 
 The cretaceous system of strata, or that of which 
 the chalk forms the most important subdivision, en- 
 counters us immediately preceding the Tertiary strata, 
 and thus is of comparatively recent date in geological 
 history. The chalk was deposited on another forma- 
 tion, an estuarine formation known as the Wealden. 
 This crops out at the surface, and forms the soil 
 between (following the Brighton main railway line) 
 Redhill and Hassocks, i.e., between the North and
 
 A Ramble over the Downs. 61 
 
 South Downs. Although, now, this break occurs in 
 the continuation of the chalk between the above- 
 mentioned places, at one time it entirely covered 
 the Weald. Before, however, it underwent the enor- 
 mous denudation which we know it did undergo, it is 
 agreed by geologists that it was overlaid to a con- 
 siderable depth by Tertiary formations, such as those 
 on which London is situated, those which are visible 
 in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, and also those 
 Eocene Tertiary deposits which form Furze Hill, 
 Brighton, and Castle Hill, Newhaven. These deposits 
 we are led to infer at one time were continuous with 
 one another, the chalk being entirely hidden by them. 
 Doubtless, there must have been considerable and 
 frequent oscillations of the level of the land in order 
 that these Tertiaries might be deposited, that, for 
 instance, the marine Thanet sands might be overlaid 
 by the estuarine Woolwich series, these by the old 
 beaches which formed the Oldhaven beds, and these 
 again by the deep-sea deposit known as the London 
 clay. Although each of these must have suffered 
 denudation in turn by the sea or estuary which de- 
 posited the succeeding strata, yet these successive 
 denudations fall into insignificance when compared 
 with that which took place when the chalk, and with 
 it the Tertiaries resting on its shoulders, finally rose 
 from beneath the waves. Not only were the Tertiary 
 beds in those places where we see the chalk exposed 
 wholly swept away, but the work of destruction in-
 
 6 2 A Ramble over the Downs. 
 
 eluded much of the chalk itself. Numerous large 
 rivers must have cut their way through it, denuding 
 the then upraised land, now known as the Weald. 
 Then the English Channel came to be formed, and 
 England was finally separated from the Continent by 
 the 'silver streak/ when the sea burst through the 
 Straits of Dover on the re-elevation of the land, at the 
 close of the epoch of glaciers and icebergs. Lyell, at 
 one time, went so far as to say that the sea itself 
 flowed in between the North and South Downs, and 
 thus formed the escarpments overlooking the Weald. 
 It is now generally considered that the district was 
 denuded almost entirely by sub-aerial agencies, by the 
 work of the ancient representatives of the streams now 
 known as the Ouse, Arun, Adur, Cuckmere, etc., and 
 those streams which must have excavated the many 
 winding valleys of the Downs. These winding valleys 
 are seen to branch and give out tributary valleys on 
 either side for miles and miles, like the windings and 
 tributaries of a once-existing river. What then became 
 of this vast amount of denuded material ? We can 
 only judge that it went to form other deposits else- 
 where, to fill up the beds of existing rivers, to form 
 the alluvium which skirts the southern rivers, or was 
 carried to the sea, where geologists of centuries to 
 come will meet with strata at present unknown to us. 
 That which concerns us, however, is the fact that 
 wrecks of this denudation occur in the shape of rich 
 patches of soil now resting, at intervals, on the chalk.
 
 A Ramble over the Downs. 63 
 
 In the places where these patches occur, are found 
 those clumps of trees which we occasionally meet 
 with in our rambles on the Downs. They consist of 
 the wrecks of the Eocene and chalk beds, and are 
 generally found in hollows, or on the slopes of hills. 
 They are composed of a rich loam with flints ; occa- 
 sionally lumps of ironstone, selenite,* and websteritet 
 are found ; in fact, a heterogeneous mixture of the 
 various materials found in existing Tertiary beds. 
 The rich loam which forms the matrix generally 
 supports a vegetation so far out of the ordinary as 
 to strike one's attention when on the Downs, and to 
 this loam we owe those shady woods, so few and far 
 between, which break the silent monotony of the 
 South Downs. J 
 
 We are now approaching the end of our path 
 through the wood, and are soon out on the wide, 
 wide Down. For the first time we take a deep 
 breath of the beautiful, bracing air which fans our 
 
 * Sulphate of lime. + Sub-sulphate of alumina. 
 
 J To those who are acquainted with the town of Brighton, it 
 may be interesting to know that the Montpellier district, the 
 Furze Hill district, and the Steine Valley, owe their vegetation to 
 these past Tertiary deposits, known to local geologists as the 
 Temple Field deposit, and the Coombe Rock or Elephant Bed. 
 This deposit occurs as wedge-shaped masses eating into the 
 chalk, and often is of serious importance in laying the founda- 
 tions of buildings. Notably that of All Saints' Church tower 
 proved a very expensive affair, and even now the tower is un- 
 finished, and has been so for years, owing doubtless to the 
 insecurity of the foundations.
 
 64 A Ramble over the Downs. 
 
 cheeks, air untainted by smoky fog, with no one near 
 with whom to share it, with no trace of decaying 
 vegetable matter to pollute it. No ; all is pure. 
 With buoyant heart, and still more buoyant limbs, 
 we skim over the elastic turf, we leave all thought of 
 town and business life behind us, intent on enjoying 
 to the utmost the health of body and wealth of know- 
 ledge which we see opened up in the path before us. 
 Let the Highlander talk of the rugged beauty of his 
 mountain home, let him praise it to the utmost as 
 the nurture-ground of the faithful and free, let him 
 sing it in his native rhyme as the birthplace and 
 cradle of the doer of many a doughty deed, as the 
 tuition ground on which was cultured that romantic 
 spirit of heroism and freedom which pervades the 
 Scot of the present day; but give me, I say, my 
 native Down, on whose bosom many a noble ancestor 
 lived and fought for his native home against the con- 
 tinual stream of invading hordes, whereon many a 
 noble and glorious fight was fought, where many a 
 patriotic soul bit the dust, and whereon oft invaders 
 and invaded met and tried their strength for the 
 mastery and the dominion of the British Isles. Give 
 me the white chalk cliffs of Albion, whose front has 
 borne the brunt of invasion after invasion by our an- 
 cestors of many a noble race, whose blood now flows 
 proudly in our veins, and from whom the English- 
 man has reaped those noble and high-minded qualities 
 which characterize him wherever on the globe we
 
 A Ramble over the Downs. 65 
 
 meet him. We of the south can look back on as 
 noble a history as the natives of any part of the British 
 Isles, and can afford to look without envy, but rather 
 with pride, on the noble doings of the ancestors of any 
 of the many noble races that have peopled our country 
 from time to time. Although we cannot offer the 
 northerner the rugged mountain climbs and other 
 opportunities for exercise available in his district, 
 we can invite him to join us in breathing the pure, 
 bracing air to be obtained in such a ramble as that 
 we are taking. 
 
 We are now making our way along the base of a 
 winding valley, whose turnings and meanderings 
 suggest the only possible answer to the question as 
 to how they were formed. Take your stand for a few 
 minutes at the top of one of the banks at your side, 
 or follow the valley to its fountain-head, until you are 
 led to what may be called its watershed, and there in 
 a moment the picture flashes before your eyes of 
 numberless streams and rivulets, all rushing seawards, 
 carrying in their bosom the sediments drained from 
 hills which gave them birth, crossing and intersecting 
 one another like a series of lakes, or meandering in 
 most regular order like one of the mighty American 
 rivers in miniature. Gaze on these valleys, and 
 remember that you are looking on a picture that 
 Nature painted by her own instruments of destruction 
 and denudation, before man had attained even the 
 rudiments of civilization, at a time when these calm, 
 
 5
 
 66 A Ramble over the Downs. 
 
 peaceful Downs were the scene of tumultuous rushings 
 of waters, bearing away the accumulation of centuries 
 seawards, at a time when the chalk rose dripping 
 from a glacial sea and shook for ever from her 
 shoulders the covering of ice -sheets and glaciers, 
 under which she had for so long laboured. One 
 might almost fancy one saw dart across the stream 
 which filled the valley we have traversed, the long 
 slim canoe of the drift man, as he passed from one 
 island to another of the archipelago now being 
 elevated above the sea. One could all but fancy 
 one saw the picture of a new world rising from 
 beneath a deluge of waters, icebergs, and glaciers, 
 the connection between the previous world and the 
 new being preserved only by a few interglacial Palaeo- 
 lithic men in these regions, or by the surviving species 
 of animals in those parts unaffected by glacial condi- 
 tions. 
 
 Be this fancy or be it not, the fact remains that the 
 line of demarcation is most marked between the 
 glacial (Pleistocene) age and the Prehistoric age. On 
 either side of important rivers are always to be found 
 terraces of gravel, sand, etc., cut out by the river, at 
 different levels, and in them are found Palaeolithic 
 (Pleistocene) implements and bones of mammals, 
 these sometimes being at a height of 100 feet, 
 while Prehistoric remains are found only to the 
 extent of a few feet of alluvium, etc., at the beds of, 
 or in immediate proximity to, the rivers as they are
 
 A Ramble over the Downs. 67 
 
 now found. This seems to show that at some one 
 period an enormous catastrophe by water took place, 
 when rivers cut their present beds through previous 
 accumulations, leaving at other levels terraces, etc., to 
 mark their previous extent and sphere of influence. 
 These facts seem to suggest that during the time 
 when rivers of some magnitude were flowing in the 
 place of our miniature rivers, they suddenly became 
 burdened with an augmented supply of water, which 
 necessarily increased the rapidity of their flow, and 
 furnished them consequently with greater power to 
 carve out and deepen their bed. They, therefore, on 
 the diminution of this supply of water, would continue 
 to flow in the deeper bed that they had carved out, 
 leaving far above them the old beaches and terraces 
 which bounded their former banks. (At whatever 
 time this happened, it must have been at a time 
 sufficiently long after the glacial epoch to allow of the 
 deposition of the gravels and river-terraces through 
 which the rivers subsequently cut their course.) 
 
 To return to our journey. We have ascended from 
 the valley, and can see before us Ditchling Beacon, 
 the highest point in Sussex, and commanding a mag- 
 nificent view of the Weald. We collect on our way 
 several specimens of land shells, now mostly un- 
 tenanted, and bleached white by the heat of the sun. 
 By diligently and perseveringly examining the many 
 flints and specimens of weathered chalk which we 
 find scattered about, we are enabled to add various 
 
 52
 
 68 A Ramble over the Downs. 
 
 interesting specimens to our collection. Now and 
 then, a fossil shell embedded in a flint rewards our 
 search, or on splitting open a flint nodule we find the 
 powdery remains of what was once a sponge, and even 
 now we can trace its exterior form in the hollow 
 cavity in the flint Thus do we veritably find sermons 
 in stones. Take in your hand a weathered flint, many 
 specimens of which lie about your path; think over the 
 changes it has gone through ; muse over its life's 
 history, its place of birth and mode of formation, the 
 forces which brought its particles together in the sea 
 which deposited the chalk, its period of inhumation 
 beneath an ever-increasing load of accumulating 
 strata ; consider the ages, countless in our sight, 
 which elapsed before its burden by denudation was 
 washed away ; then it was rolled and chipped about 
 in chequered career until on the recession of the 
 waters it was left, perhaps in the self-same spot where 
 we find it, a silent witness to both passing political 
 changes and to past physical revolutions. There it 
 has lain, in all probability, since the time when Britain 
 was united to the Continent, and, like the remains of 
 the Neolithic Flint Implement Factory at Cissbury, 
 has since remained untouched, save by the hand of 
 time, through ages successively marked by Celt, 
 Roman, Saxon, and Norman. 
 
 Such thoughts as these flash through our mind as we 
 grasp this relic of the past. They make us attach 
 more value to it as we handle it, they cause us to think
 
 A Ramble over the Downs. 69 
 
 more kindly over this aggregation of silicon and 
 oxygen, and to perceive something worthy of thought 
 and admiration, even in what, after all, to most people, 
 is but a common flint. 
 
 But now we are stepping on to the Beacon, from 
 which, and to which, was flashed, before the age 
 of the telegraph, three centuries ago, the news 
 which stirred the patriotism of every soul throughout 
 the land the news that the Invincible Armada had 
 been sighted and was now threatening our hallowed 
 shores. As we gain the brow of the hill, the escarp- 
 ment of the Downs, we realize the effect of the war- 
 beacon on the thousands of homesteads clustered in 
 the plain below. We hear again the bustle and ex- 
 citement of preparations for our country's defence, the 
 clatter of horse, or the steady tramp of the men of 
 Sussex marching to join their noble Queen at Tilbury. 
 Macaulay's lines are called to remembrance, and we 
 feel again those patriotic feelings which rose in our 
 breasts when we heard the lines brilliantly rendered by 
 an accomplished reciter. A grand scene is unfolded 
 to our view below. Scores of villages are there, and 
 numerous farms, surrounded each by its colony of 
 tiny cottages, stand out amidst the hedgerowed fields 
 like so many toy houses, each with its little garden, 
 for so does every field appear to us from our elevated 
 place of view. 
 
 But now our ramble is at an end. We have crossed 
 the range of Downs, and descend into the pretty
 
 70 A Ramble over the Downs. 
 
 country below. A majestically winding road of 
 Roman age takes us down the side of the hill, past 
 numerous chalk-pits, across the outcrop of the Gault 
 and Greensand strata, and a short walk brings us to the 
 little village of Ditchling. There we can turn and 
 look towards the hills, and realize how wisely such 
 commanding spots were oft selected as the camping- 
 ground for the invading Romans. A source of strength, 
 they guard our southern shore, but we can well see 
 how, in the hands of an enemy, they might indeed 
 become a source of weakness.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A GEOLOGICAL JOURNEY FROM LONDON TO 
 BRIGHTON. 
 
 'As firm as the mountains' World-making Geological Systems 
 The subsoils of London Purley chalk-pit North Downs 
 Billiard-table of Sussex The Weald The great Iguanodon 
 Pouched animals in England Elephant bed Strange 
 fossils at Brighton. 
 
 IT is surprising that so little interest is felt by the 
 majority of people as to the nature of the ground 
 over which they tread, whether, for instance, it is com- 
 posed of sand, or clay, or limestome, and whether the 
 strata which form the various soils and subsoils were 
 laid down by the sea or by the agency of rivers. 
 Many have still no other thought than that the land 
 always existed in the same condition as that in which 
 we now see it, and that where now are mountains, 
 valleys, and forests, there was never aught else to be 
 found, some, perhaps, still entertaining the belief that 
 no alteration in the configuration of the land masses 
 has taken place since the earth's creation. This is 
 undoubtedly erroneous, and it will be necessary at once
 
 72 A Geological Journey 
 
 to state that our present continents are merely in a 
 state of transition, and that the phrase ' as firm as the 
 mountains ' has, geologically speaking, no force what- 
 ever. The elevation of most of the stupendous ranges 
 of mountains existing on the earth's surface took place 
 at a comparatively recent date, although some of the 
 lesser ranges belong to a considerably older period. 
 Amongst the best known of these are the low ranges 
 of hills familiar to us as the North and South Downs, 
 which were formed at the latter end of what is known 
 as the Secondary epoch, although, of course, they have 
 since been raised to their present elevation. They 
 will occupy a share of our attention on our journey 
 to Brighton. 
 
 Beneath our feet there exist layer upon layer of 
 sedimentary material, which have been piled upon the 
 top of each other to a depth of not less perhaps than 
 twelve miles. They have not been deposited con- 
 tinuously. Between many of the layers there exists a 
 visible break, shown in some cases by the brecciated 
 nature of the material at the junction of the formations. 
 This break in the deposition of the strata would occur 
 when an area, which had been submerged, again 
 became dry land, other layers afterwards being thrown 
 upon it when the sea or other body of water again 
 covered it. The fossil forms in these two sets of strata 
 would differ according as the interval of time between 
 each successive deposit was long or short. To mention
 
 From London to Brighton. 73 
 
 one case, the chalk strata are seen at Charlton with 
 the Thanet Sands reposing upon them, and at the 
 junction of the two the chalk is seen to have suffered 
 great aqueous erosion. Some ten or twelve inches of 
 debris, consisting principally of rolled flints, which 
 have been washed out and rounded by the action of 
 the sea, are found resting upon the chalk, although 
 beneath the Tertiaries. The fossil remains of the 
 chalk differ entirely from those of the Eocene (to 
 which the Thanet Sands belong), certain forms of life 
 having during the interval become extinct, and given 
 place to those which are peculiar to the Eocene age. 
 
 The strata, or layers, to which I have referred, have 
 been arranged by geologists, according to the mineral- 
 ogical and palaeontological characters with which they 
 are stamped, into twelve grand systems, beneath which 
 occurs what is supposed to be the original surface of 
 the earth, denuded, of course, by miles of material 
 which might have been worn down in intermediate 
 ages to form the various strata which now rest 
 upon it. 
 
 Between London and Brighton none of the Primary 
 or Palaeozoic rocks come to the surface. During our 
 journey, we shall be principally concerned with the 
 more recent portion of the Secondary age, as well as 
 some of the succeeding Tertiaries. The following 
 table will illustrate the formations with which we shall 
 be concerned :
 
 74 ^ Geological Journey 
 
 {Alluvium 1 
 
 Brick-earth ^Pleistocene. 
 
 Gravel and Sand J 
 
 /'London Clay ~\ 
 
 Oldhaven Pebble Beds I ,-, 
 
 TERTIARY J Woolwich Be ds f J * B * fc 
 
 ^Thanet Sands J 
 
 {Chalk \ 
 
 Gr u Taa reenSand \Cretaceous. 
 Lower Greensand, or NeocomianJ 
 
 Weald Clay \Wealden. 
 
 Hastings Sands J 
 
 I propose to examine the nature of the strata in 
 question, by taking one of the slow trains of the 
 Brighton Railway Company, and examining the banks 
 and cuttings on both sides as we travel southwards. 
 
 Starting from London Bridge, the most recent 
 deposit, the Alluvium, occupies the whole of 
 Bermondsey on the north-east of the railway, and 
 also the Isle of Dogs and the Greenwich Marshes, 
 but dwindles to an insignificant patch by the side of 
 the river westward. London Bridge terminus and 
 Waterloo are situated upon it. It would seem that 
 our ancestors, when they first decided to adopt the site 
 of London as the position for their future city, 
 marched up the river until they had left the alluvium 
 behind, doubtless being fully aware of the unde- 
 sirability of building on this low-lying impervious soil. 
 In the east of London, especially on the north side of 
 the river, it occupies broad tracts, although in the 
 west it is only found along the immediate banks of the 
 Thames.
 
 From London to Brighton. 75 
 
 The deposit of Brick-earth is an extremely local one, 
 and occurs in the vicinity of New Cross and Peckham. 
 Mr. Whitaker says, ' This loam, or mixture of clay and 
 sand, is more local than the gravel on which it rests, 
 though it nevertheless takes up some space. It is of 
 brown colour and of no great thickness, and, being 
 more or less clayey, tends to prevent water from 
 sinking to the gravel.' It is so called in consequence 
 of its constituents forming good material for the 
 making of bricks. This quality was taken advantage 
 of, I am told, at a place known as Red Hill, in 
 Greenwich, where to stay the denuding action of the 
 atmosphere upon it, the hill was burnt, so to speak, 
 forming it into a hard rock-like substance. 
 
 The next formation, the gravel and sand, occupies a 
 good deal of space in South London, and together 
 with the Brick-earth constitutes the Valley or River 
 Drift, having been deposited at times when the 
 Thames was a much wider river than now, or per- 
 haps when it left its burden of sediment after 
 periodical floods. A soil composed of this mixture of 
 sand and gravel is, I need scarcely say, a healthy one 
 on which to live, owing to the sand giving passage for 
 the drainage of superfluous water. It supplies all the 
 shallow wells, and extends sometimes to a depth of 
 twenty feet. 
 
 But now we have passed over the ground occupied 
 by the Quaternary deposits, and are travelling over the 
 outcrop of the Woolwich Beds, which we have de-
 
 76 A Geological Journey 
 
 scribed elsewhere in treating of the London Basin, and 
 which we soon leave behind as we pass Brockley 
 Station. The London Clay next demands our 
 attention, and occupies the ground beneath us as we 
 travel through the suburban stations between Brockley 
 and Croydon.* Immediately after passing Croydon, 
 a cutting may be seen on our right, some two hundred 
 yards away, where the Thanet Sands, the lowest 
 member of the Tertiary strata, are to be seen. The 
 sections are known in the neighbourhood as the 
 ballast-pits. These beds are the last to crop out 
 before encountering the chalk, and have at their 
 base a layer which is impervious to water, so that 
 many wells in South London are supplied from this 
 source. 
 
 Having journeyed over the extreme limits of what 
 is known as the London Basin, the chalk strata, the 
 uppermost layer of the Cretaceous system, gradually 
 rises from beneath our feet. If we watch the sides of 
 the cuttings through which we pass, we at once 
 recognise the white amorphous form of carbonate of 
 lime known as chalk. We notice a large chalk-pit at 
 Purley Station, where a great portion of the hill has 
 been carried away for the manufacture of lime. By 
 means of calcining, the chalk is split up into lime and 
 carbonic acid, the suffocating effect produced by the 
 latter being at once evident in the vicinity of the 
 lime-kilns. The railway as far as Merstham has been 
 * See page 95.
 
 From London to Brighton. 77 
 
 laid down in a cutting in the rock, and when we pass 
 through Merstham Tunnel we are travelling under the 
 highest part of the range of hills known as the North 
 or Surrey Downs. 
 
 It is interesting to note that roads and railways 
 almost invariably lie in close proximity to one another, 
 and that they usually follow the direction of some of 
 the many river-valleys which intersect a chalky country. 
 In these valleys are often found beds of flints, which 
 at once bespeak the source whence they have been 
 derived, viz., from the chalk itself. The conclusion 
 arrived at is that these hills must have been intersected 
 in Tertiary ages by numerous rivers and streams, at the 
 time, perhaps, that the chalk was elevated from the 
 Cretaceous sea, when an enormous amount of denuda- 
 tion took place as the waves gradually receded from it. 
 The rivers would bear away the light particles of the 
 chalk, but the heavy flints would sink to the bottom, 
 remaining where they were thus deposited as evidence 
 to us in the present age of the amount of denudation 
 which had taken place. It is in consequence of such 
 beds of flint occurring in different parts of Surrey and 
 Sussex, where the chalk is not now to be found, that 
 we judge and decide that at a period remote from now 
 the chalk entirely covered the Weald. 
 
 We have now emerged from Merstham Tunnel, and 
 the least observant person can at once see that a great 
 change comes over the scene. Instead of seeing the 
 rounded heights of the Downs encircling us on every
 
 78 A Geological Journey 
 
 side, we are leaving the hills far away behind, and are 
 gliding smoothly over a wide area of flat tableland, 
 which we shall continue to notice until we arrive at 
 Three Bridges. Immediately on leaving the tunnel 
 we pass over the outcrops from beneath the chalk of 
 the Upper Greensand, the Gault, and, as we approach 
 Redhill, the Lower Greensand. Here the latter forma- 
 tion rises to a considerable altitude, and instead of 
 being green, as its name would imply, presents a reddish 
 appearance. This is shown in the cutting on our left, 
 through which the South-Eastern Railway branches off 
 to Tunbridge Wells, and in the pits of sand which 
 can be seen on our right, just after passing the railway- 
 station. 
 
 We soon, however, leave the Lower Greensand be- 
 hind, and at Earlswood pass on to the Weald clay, 
 which, with the Hastings Sands over which we travel 
 at Three Bridges, go to make up the Wealden forma- 
 tion. The country occupied by this series of strata 
 has a very regular and smooth surface, and is known 
 in some parts as the ' Billiard-table of Sussex.' 
 
 The Hastings Sands are so called from the town of 
 Hastings, which is situated on a continuation of the 
 beds eastward. The whole Wealden formation, there- 
 fore, covers almost the entire area between the North 
 and South Downs, and presents such an appearance 
 as would be caused by the wasting away of material 
 between the two ranges and the laying bare of the 
 older formation beneath. The North Downs, roughly
 
 From London to Brighton. 79 
 
 speaking, have their termination eastward at the Fore- 
 land, whilst the South Downs end abruptly at Beachy 
 Head. The Weald clay and Hastings Sands approach 
 the sea and form the coast line between the two pro- 
 montories, so that if we were to prepare a diagram 
 showing a section of the strata around the coast of 
 Kent and Sussex, it would be very similar indeed to 
 one prepared to show a section between the North 
 and South Downs. It is thus, then, that we find 
 Hastings situated on the sands of that name, on the 
 coast between the two points mentioned. 
 
 We have now passed Three Bridges, and we begin 
 to notice a change in the aspect of the country. In- 
 stead of a flat table-land of clay, we notice that the 
 new formation is thrown up in a very irregular manner, 
 constituting what are known as the Wealden Heights. 
 We observe the strata at the side of the various railway 
 cuttings as we pass through them, and perceive that 
 they dip northward at an angle of about 25, some- 
 times more and sometimes less, as if at some point at 
 which we have not yet arrived the strata have been 
 subjected to a great upheaval. This we shall find has 
 been the case in the vicinity of Balcombe, where the 
 highest parts of the range occur, and whence the 
 strata, bending over, dip in an opposite direction, 
 and form somewhere about this point what is known 
 as a ' saddle-back,' or a ' Forest Ridge,' as it is 
 called. A great part of it has subsequently been 
 removed by denudation. Here we pass through Bal-
 
 8o A Geological Journey 
 
 combe Tunnel, and perhaps if our journey has here- 
 tofore taken place on a rainy day, we shall emerge 
 under quite a different sky, for it has often been 
 noticed that the hills represented to us by the tunnel 
 are sufficient to be the cause of a distinct change of 
 atmospheric conditions, which we may notice in pass- 
 ing from one side to the other. We notice, too, 
 that several of the bridges under which we pass are 
 built of material quarried from the local sandstone 
 formation. In Kent extensive use is made of this 
 stone for building purposes, the churches of Staple- 
 hurst, Cranbrook, Goudhurst, Hawkhurst, and others, 
 being built almost entirely of it. 
 
 On the right of the railway as we pass through 
 Balcombe Tunnel is the woodland district known as 
 Tilgate Forest, in whose quarries Dr. Mantell pursued 
 his studies concerning the Wealden formation, and in 
 which he found the fossil remains of the great land- 
 reptile Iguanodon Mantelli, and to which he gave his 
 name. This animal, which rivalled the elephant in 
 size, had two long hind-legs and two short front ones, 
 supporting itself like the modern kangaroo. From the 
 appearance presented by its teeth having been ground 
 down, it has been judged that it was a vegetarian 
 feeder. One specimen which has been put together 
 in the Brussels Museum proves it to have been more 
 than thirty feet in height. 
 
 A number of lower jaws of small marsupials or 
 pouched mammals have been found in what are known
 
 From London to Brighton. 81 
 
 as the Purbeck Beds and the Stonesfield Slate, divisions 
 of the Oolitic system which are not very far removed, 
 geologically, from the Wealden formation. Thus the 
 period brings to our notice a state of affairs existent in 
 these regions, similar to that now found among the 
 animal kingdom in Australia. This is the principal part 
 of the world where pouched animals are now found. 
 Geology shows us that at the time we are considering 
 they existed in these northern regions; but have in 
 the course of time given way to a fauna more highly 
 organized and more able to withstand the vicissitudes 
 of our climate. 
 
 We have now passed over the following forma- 
 tions : 
 
 Quaternary, 
 
 Tertiary (Eocene), 
 
 Cretaceous, 
 
 Wealden, 
 
 and, having crossed the saddleback ridge of the Weald, 
 we shall again encounter the same series of strata, 
 only that this time they will be in the reverse order, 
 and will dip away in an opposite direction, namely, 
 to the south. 
 
 On arriving at Keymer Junction station we agairi 
 meet the Weald Clay which we lost at Three Bridges, 
 and at the next station, Burgess Hill, we once more 
 pass on to the Cretaceous formation. We shortly 
 after enter the tunnel at Clayton, which is pierced 
 through the chalk of the South Downs. We soon 
 
 6
 
 82 A Geological Journey 
 
 arrive at Brighton Station and pass through another 
 Quaternary accumulation known as the Elephant Bed, 
 or Coombe Rock. 
 
 The two great systems which we have just 
 traversed, the Wealden and the Cretaceous, differ 
 from one another in this most fundamental principle, 
 that whereas the chalk is a deep-sea deposit, con- 
 taining a truly marine fauna, the Wealden is either 
 freshwater or brackish, and therefore contains fossils 
 peculiar to those formations. Earlier geologists could 
 not understand how such a vast estuary deposit 
 as the Weald could possibly have been overlaid by 
 the chalk to a depth of some 1,000 feet. It would 
 have necessitated adopting the belief that the earth's 
 surface must have receded below the waves, and 
 have been subsequently re-elevated into dry land. 
 This, however, is the belief which has since been 
 adopted, and indeed without any very great stretch of 
 the imagination, since many other instances have 
 been encountered in geological history, of submergence 
 and re-elevation in the same place, perhaps two or 
 three times repeated. 
 
 The chalk is almost entirely composed of the 
 microscopic calcareous and silicious coverings of 
 myriads of minute Foraminifera. Much light has 
 been thrown on the formation of chalk by discoveries 
 made by the Challenger expedition, when on ex- 
 amination of ooze brought up from the bottom of the 
 Atlantic during the deep-sea dredging, it was found to
 
 From London to Brighton. 83 
 
 consist principally of foraminiferal shells of various 
 genera, the Globigerina, the same genus that is found 
 in the chalk, predominating. The silicious shells of 
 Polycystinae, and the silicious skeletons of microscopic 
 plants called Diatomaciae, were found, together with 
 the silicious spicules of sponges. It may readily be 
 conceived that the silica for producing the flints which 
 intersect the chalk in vertical and horizontal bands 
 may have had its origin in these innumerable silicious 
 bodies. 
 
 The Wealden, on the other hand, is a freshwater 
 deposit, assuming in some parts an estuarine char- 
 acter. Travelling west to east, we find that its fossil 
 remains become more and more allied to those 
 known to inhabit brackish waters. It is argued from 
 this, and on other grounds, that the strata were 
 deposited in the bed of a gigantic river flowing 
 towards the east from far out in the Atlantic, and 
 entering the North Sea of those days. This formation 
 is not only developed in southern England, but in 
 the Netherlands, the interval forming at this period a 
 large estuary to a mighty river, draining the raised 
 bed of the Atlantic, and rivalling in size the great 
 American rivers. 
 
 Ironstone occurs in such abundance and purity in 
 the Weald that, previous to the development of the 
 iron-smelting trade in the north, it was largely quarried 
 for economic purposes. It is interesting to note that 
 the railing which encloses St. Paul's Cathedral is made 
 
 62
 
 84 A Geological Journey 
 
 from iron worked in the Weald. Blocks of ironstone 
 may be seen by the side of the railway north of 
 Haywards Heath station, where for some distance the 
 strata have been laid bare by the widening of the 
 cutting to allow room for the new line of rails to East 
 Grinstead. 
 
 We have now arrived within sight of our destination, 
 and observe that the Brighton terminus has been cut 
 out of the side of a chalk hill. When the site was 
 excavated it was found necessary to cut through a 
 Quaternary formation on the chalk known as the 
 ' Elephant Bed,' so called because bones of that 
 animal had been found in the bed as exhibited 
 elsewhere. This excavation created great interest in 
 the geological world, all manner of bones and carved 
 flints, etc., being found there ; bones which, when 
 examined, were found to belong to animals of very 
 recent date, such as the common ox, sheep, etc. In 
 fact, one individual was caught depositing these 
 1 fossils ' in the bed one night, for enthusiastic palaeon- 
 tologists to discover the next day, and dilate upon 
 in their works to an interested and wonder-stricken 
 world ! 
 
 We have now traversed, geologically, the line 
 between London and Brighton, and maybe these 
 pages will cause him who reads them to take an 
 interest in the country when gliding towards the 
 Queen of Watering-places. It is a journey which is 
 being travelled yearly by many thousands of people,
 
 From London to Brighton. 85 
 
 and the ennui often begotten by an hour in the 
 railway train may perhaps be provided against by 
 evincing an interest, although slight and perhaps 
 passing, in the geology of the district travelled 
 through. 
 
 TWT 
 
 X /I\ N
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A TALE OF TWO TEETH. 
 
 An ancient world An ancient occupant A very useful tooth 
 A sufferer from toothache. 
 
 I HAVE a tooth which measures eight inches in 
 length, six inches in depth, and three inches 
 across the crown. I have another measuring an 
 eighth of an inch in length, depth, and thickness. No, 
 dear reader, neither of them at any time belonged to a 
 human creature ; they have come into my possession 
 as relics of those that lived in an age long anterior to 
 that in which you and I live. 
 
 Both these teeth have a characteristic story of their 
 own to tell. 
 
 The first, the larger of the two, stood originally in 
 the mouth of an animal belonging to the elephant 
 tribe, elephas primigenius, more familiarly known as 
 the mammoth. 
 
 On the coast of Norfolk and Suffolk, the relics of a 
 formation are to be found, which extends in some
 
 A Tale of Two Teeth. 87 
 
 parts beneath the sea, and which, in the neighbour- 
 hood of Cromer, is known as the Cromer Forest Bed. 
 There are other forest beds to be found around the 
 coast of Britain, all of which were overwhelmed by the 
 sea in prehistoric times, when the ocean gradually en- 
 croached on the land, and washed large quantities of 
 its debris into the area of the primaeval forest which 
 had till then existed. The trees became rooted up 
 by the violence of the sea, and buried in the bed of 
 the advancing ocean, and a proof of this is to be found 
 in the fact that stumps and trunks of trees are even 
 now being thrown up on the coasts of our eastern 
 counties. 
 
 In the forest there had roamed many of the 
 large mammals which characterised tertiary ages, and 
 amongst them was this extinct elephant. The owner 
 of this particular tooth may have died before his 
 forest home met with its final annihilation, or he 
 may have been a solitary survivor of his species, who 
 lived to see the wreck of the forest in which he and 
 his comrades had disported themselves. Any way, 
 when at last he shuffled off his mortal coil, his bones 
 found a grave beneath the ocean, and there were 
 rolled and tossed about by tide and current until one 
 by one they became disjointed, and scattered about in 
 the bed of the sea. 
 
 The teeth of this animal possessed a very useful 
 quality, which cannot but cause a pang of regret to 
 many who read of it, that the same benefit was not
 
 88 A Tale of Two Teeth. 
 
 extended to those of the human species. This was a 
 continual growing of tooth material, from the back to 
 the front of the mouth, so that as by continual grind- 
 ing the tooth was worn away, a fresh growth replaced 
 that which was lost. The crown of the tooth, as we 
 look upon it, is seen to consist of ten parallel folds of 
 enamel, the foremost five being in a perfected condi- 
 tion, whilst the five posterior folds have not yet at- 
 tained their full development. 
 
 This tooth, too, served a useful purpose, even when 
 seemingly lost to all knowledge at the bottom of the 
 ocean. It became the dwelling-place of various 
 minute marine animals, which made use of it in the 
 same way as those which we see covering a scallop- 
 shell when fresh from the sea. In some parts it 
 became enveloped by one of the little compound 
 animals, the Flustra or sea-mat, consisting of a 
 number of organisms similar in external structure to 
 the coral polype, united to one another to form one 
 common polyzoarium ; in others by a white chalky 
 layer of acorn shells or Balani, similar to those which 
 encrust the piles of piers between high and low water- 
 mark. 
 
 After a long period of submarine existence, it was 
 dredged up by some Lowestoft fishermen, and brought 
 ashore with its covering organisms complete. It then 
 passed into my possession, and has since proved a 
 very useful and interesting geological specimen. 
 
 Many useful ornaments are made of these fossil
 
 A Tale of Two Teeth. 89 
 
 teeth, since they are composed of good ivory, and are 
 susceptible of a fine smooth polish. 
 
 The second tooth mentioned above does not, 
 perhaps, possess such an important history. 
 
 It is one of a series of small teeth which were ex- 
 tracted from the chalk cliff near Rottingdean, on the 
 Sussex coast. 
 
 A violent storm was just subsiding with the ebbing 
 tide. The fury of the waves as they lashed the foot 
 of the cliffs when the storm was at it highest had 
 worn away the chalk around that part where these teeth 
 were imbedded. Being, however, of a harder texture 
 than the surrounding chalk, they had resisted for a 
 time the action of the waves, and the tide had receded, 
 leaving them abutting from the chalky matrix. As 
 the largest of them was not so much as a half an inch 
 in length, however, it required close observation in 
 order to detect them, and a search resulted in the 
 discovery of others of a smaller size. Their proximity 
 to one another in the cliff would seem to point to 
 their having belonged at some period to one and the 
 same animal in this case a fish of the shark tribe. 
 
 One of the larger of them was peculiarly worn away, 
 and in such a manner that it seemed to suggest that it 
 had been subject to a decay such as even we human 
 owners of teeth experience. Whether the decaying 
 process commenced in this tooth while as yet its 
 owner lived, or whether the decay was of more 
 recent origin, we can but speculate. We have heard
 
 go A Tale of Two Teeth. 
 
 that the monkey at the Zoological Gardens lost his 
 toothache when a decaying molar was extracted, but 
 whether a fish ever suffered from the malady is a 
 question for discussion. We will charitably hope 
 that decay of the teeth is not of such ancient origin 
 as the chalk period, and that this tooth in particular 
 was not the cause of suffering to its fishy owner.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE GEOLOGICAL POSITION OF LONDON. 
 
 The London Basin Sections at the Charlton pits A shell- 
 marble Pebble-beds The London Clay From a tropical 
 to an arctic climate Ice-sheets and glaciers. 
 
 IF a Londoner were to bore immediately beneath 
 his feet he would find that he must pierce through 
 some hundreds of feet of clay and sand before arriving 
 at the well-known chalk beds, which he sees out- 
 cropping at the surface of the land both north and 
 south of London and its suburbs. As he travelled 
 southward from the Thames towards the Downs he 
 would find the chalk at a gradually decreasing depth, 
 and as he went northward from the same line of 
 division he would meet with a similar experience. 
 
 This is because the chalk is at its greatest depth in 
 the valley of the Thames, and either north or south 
 from it the bed gradually rises towards the surface. 
 
 The shape of the chalk strata resembles, therefore, 
 that of a trough or basin, and in this the various
 
 92 The Geological Position of London. 
 
 tertiary beds have been deposited which occur in what 
 is known as the LONDON BASIN. 
 
 But in London proper, with the exception of a small 
 district at Lewisham and Charlton, the chalk does not 
 appear at the surface at all, being regularly covered 
 by one or more formations belonging to the Eocene 
 age. The chalk as it approaches London from the 
 south most aggravatingly sinks beneath the surface at 
 an imaginary line joining the towns of Epsom, Sutton, 
 Croydon, Orpington, 'and Seven Oaks, and to such a 
 depth that at the spot where a shaft was sunk by the 
 Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company at Streatham 
 a year or two ago, the chalk was only arrived at after 
 traversing 900 feet of tertiary beds of clay, gravel, and 
 sand. When, however, we pass beyond the northern- 
 most limits of London, we again find the chalk 
 immediately beneath our feet, cropping out from 
 beneath these tertiary beds at a line joining the towns 
 of Watford, Rickmansworth, Beaconsfield, Marlow, 
 Maidenhead, on to Reading and Hungerford, and 
 forming the long southern slopes of the Chiltern 
 Hills. 
 
 Thus we see that the whole of the Metropolis and 
 the beds on which it is built are held in a trough of 
 the chalk, the hills forming a natural boundary both 
 north and south. The beds above the chalk may be 
 classified as follows : 
 
 ( Made earth (in central London). 
 ( Alluvium.
 
 The Geological Position of London. 93 
 f Brick Earth. 
 
 2. < 
 
 ( Gravel and Sand. 
 
 3. Boulder Clay (Glacial). 
 
 4. London Clay. 
 
 5. Oldhaven (pebble) Beds. 
 
 6. Woolwich and Reading Beds. 
 
 7. Thanet Sands. 
 
 A few characteristics of each of these, and the 
 places where they can be seen, may be of interest to 
 the casual geologist. 
 
 The Thanet Sands (7) are one of the most well- 
 marked divisions of the tertiary strata. They attain 
 their greatest thickness on the north-east coast of 
 Kent, being 100 feet thick in the Isle of Thanet, and 
 taking their name therefrom. As we approach London 
 in a westerly direction the bed gradually thins out, so 
 that when we reach the Bank of England it is only 40 
 feet thick, and at Baling, to the west of London, it has 
 but a thickness of eight feet. The materials of which 
 the bed is composed have a special characteristic 
 attaching to them, and one which serves to show to 
 some extent the source whence the sand was de- 
 rived before being laid down by the sea which once 
 covered them. Under a microscope the particles of 
 sand are ascertained to be of a regular crystalline form, 
 altogether unlike the rounded grains of which sand is 
 ordinarily composed. Now in Belgium there is a wide 
 extent of country, the surface of which is composed of 
 primary crystalline rocks, containing a large proportion
 
 94 The Geological Position of London. 
 
 of quartz, which as you know is exactly the same as 
 sand and flint in its chemical composition. This fact, 
 together with the knowledge stated above that the 
 sands are thickest in the east and thin out to the west, 
 serves to show that the sea denuded the crystalline 
 rocks and washed the quartz westward, laying it down 
 where we now see it, but only transporting the 
 material in diminishing quantities to any distance in 
 the west, and having no influence beyond Richmond, 
 where it dies out. There are some sand pits at 
 Charlton, near Woolwich, where it has a thickness of 
 about 50 feet. Large quantities are here quarried and 
 shipped as ballast by vessels leaving the Thames. The 
 vertical cliff caused by these quarrying operations 
 shows us a layer of chalk at its base, whilst between 
 the chalk and the Thanet Sands is a thin layer, 
 perhaps a foot thick, of flints. This layer derives its 
 origin from the denudation of the soft chalk, the 
 heavier flints having been left behind by the water 
 which denuded it. 
 
 At Charlton the beds known as the Woolwich 
 series (6) are also well developed. Similarly they are 
 to be seen in full force at Castle Cliff, Newhaven, and 
 at Seaford. The most remarkable feature about these 
 beds is that they include layer after layer of shells, 
 principally cyrena, packed tightly together in a matrix 
 of clay. When a mass of it is dried, it bears a 
 resemblance to the shell-marble found in the Weald, 
 and known as Sussex or Pet worth Marble. Much of
 
 The Geological Position of London. 95 
 
 the shell-sand used largely in London for spreading 
 over garden paths is obtained from these beds. 
 
 The Oldhaven Beds (5) next to be mentioned are 
 recognisable at once in the neighbourhood of London. 
 In a matrix of clayey sand are contained large quan- 
 tities of rounded pebbles not larger than a hen's egg, 
 and generally smaller. These pebbles are noticed in 
 large numbers in Greenwich Park. Blackheath itself 
 sometimes gives its name to the series, whilst those 
 who have visited Croham Hurst, a short distance 
 south of Croydon, cannot but have noticed the 
 quantity of pebbles which are trodden under foot. 
 
 All these formations, however, sink into insignifi- 
 cance beside the deposit of London Clay (4) which 
 now came to be laid down. In some places it shows 
 a thickness of as much as 500 feet. In the London 
 Basin it covers a great part of the surface, and it is also 
 to be found in full force in Hampshire, extending into 
 the Isle of Wight. Looking at a geological map of 
 the country, one cannot help being struck by a convic- 
 tion that these deposits were once continuous with 
 each other, and that the whole of the clay between 
 Hampshire and the Thames has since been so com- 
 pletely washed away that now not a trace is to be 
 found in the country between those parts. 
 
 The character of the fossils which the London clay 
 affords, at once points it out to have been deposited in 
 a sea perhaps quite as deep as that which in a previous 
 age had laid down the chalk. Most of the low hills
 
 96 The Geological Position of London. 
 
 around London are formed of this clay, such as 
 Shooter's Hill, the Sydenham Hills, Primrose Hill, etc. 
 It consists of a stiff clay, and is always more or less 
 damp at its surface, although the effects of this are 
 greatly modified in a large part of South London and 
 in the City, owing to a subsequent deposition of gravel 
 upon it. 
 
 After the London Clay had been gradually accumu- 
 lating for many ages beneath the ocean, the bed of 
 the sea came to be gradually upheaved, until at last 
 it appeared as dry land, the greater part of what are 
 now the British Isles probably partaking in the 
 upheaval. Thus during the Miocene age, which 
 followed, no deposits were laid down in the neighbour- 
 hood of London, although during the succeeding 
 Pliocene age the coast lirre again approached suffici- 
 ently near, by a submergence of the land, to allow of 
 the deposition by the sea of those beds known on the 
 Norfolk and Suffolk coasts as the Coralline and Red 
 Crags. 
 
 A gradual declension of climatal temperature had 
 been going on since the tropical times of the London 
 Clay, through the sub-tropical Miocene age and the 
 temperate Pliocene era, until now, at the ushering in 
 of Pleistocene times, the climate was not far short 
 of arctic, and indeed the country, as it then was, soon 
 became covered by an extensive ice-sheet, and 
 glaciers came sliding down from the higher grounds, 
 bringing with them the products of their place of
 
 The Geological Position of London. 97 
 
 origin, and depositing their burdens as they melted in 
 places far removed from the land of their birth. In 
 the north of England the result has been that thick 
 banks of clay known as ' boulder clay ' and ' till ' have 
 been formed, whilst imbedded therein have been 
 found a few species of shells of a distinctly arctic 
 character and such as are not now found on the 
 English coasts at all In the north of London, on the 
 hills of Hampstead and Highgate, a capping of this 
 boulder clay is to be found, the valley of the Thames 
 being a rough boundary of the southernmost sphere of 
 the influence of glacial conditions. 
 
 But now the glacial epoch passed away, and with the 
 melting of the ice-sheets the land became again raised 
 above the level of the sea. The Thames and other 
 rivers, charged with an increased volume of water 
 over and above that which they possessed before all 
 were hidden beneath the sea, cut their way through 
 the beds which surrounded them, as for instance in the 
 case of the Thames, through the Eocene formations 
 before mentioned and deriving large quantities of 
 flints from the existing Eocene pebble-beds, it pro- 
 ceeded to scatter them along its banks, and to deposit 
 them in the then lower reaches of the river, thus 
 giving rise to those wide tracts of ' Gravel and sand ' 
 (2) which cover so large an area in South London. 
 These gravel deposits must not be confounded with 
 certain gravel beaches and terraces which occur in 
 the north of London, and which owe their origin to 
 
 7
 
 98 The Geological Position of London. 
 
 the glacial conditions already referred to as also giving 
 rise to the boulder clays. 
 
 In approaching London from the east, as soon as 
 we get clear of a line drawn from Greenwich through 
 Lewisham and extended southward, we leave all the 
 outcrops of the London Tertiaries behind, with the 
 exception of one viz., the London clay. This im- 
 portant formation, together with, in some parts, the 
 river gravels, constitutes almost the whole of South 
 London between the imaginary line we have drawn 
 and a western boundary which we may fix as far west 
 as Kingston and Wimbledon. The eastern part of 
 Wimbledon Common is London clay, and on the west 
 the gravels are in full force. Tooting Common is 
 situated on the clay. North Brixton and Clapham 
 are mostly built upon gravel, although in the latter 
 place the clay shows itself largely in Clapham Park. 
 Sydenham, the Crystal Palace and Forest Hill are 
 built upon clay, but both north and south of the 
 Palace there are two patches of gravel on the summit 
 of the hills. Think of the time when the river was 
 sufficiently broad to deposit this gravel, about six 
 miles from the present river ! Continuing eastward 
 we find a thick bed of gravel following the valley of 
 the river Ravensbourne, identical in direction with 
 the Lewisham Road and reaching to the south of 
 Bromley. 
 
 North of these places, and between them and the 
 river, the surface consists of 'gravel and sand,' except,
 
 The Geological Position of London. 99 
 
 of course, in the immediate vicinity of the river. 
 This would seem to show that the river, previously to 
 laying down the gravel, destroyed great part of the 
 Tertiaries, leaving only a part of the London clay 
 exposed, and then with the denuded fragments de- 
 posited the pebbles in the form of gravel. Thus the 
 work of destruction and denudation went on side by 
 side with that of construction, the two actions to some 
 extent counterbalancing one another. 
 
 It is a striking fact that the next formation that of 
 the alluvium (i) although found to so great an extent 
 below London Bridge, is scarcely found at all above 
 the bridge, and this is, indeed, very likely to have been 
 the cause of the site on which the city was built. 
 Over a large part of Bermondsey there appears this 
 thick bed of river mud, while in the bed of the river 
 eastward from London Bridge an important fault 
 appears to have occurred, so that the strata on the 
 north of the river have sunk down to a lower level 
 than those on the south. The result of this fault was 
 that the river spread itself over a wide tract of land on 
 the north, and in prehistoric times deposited alluvium 
 wherever it went. Even now the level is considerably 
 lower than that on the south, and consists principally 
 of wide stretches of marsh land. 
 
 72
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 NATURAL SCIENCE JOTTINGS FROM FELIXSTOWE. 
 
 At the seaside The Norfolk and Suffolk cliffs Red Crag- 
 London Clay Cement stones A reversed whelk River 
 Deben Springs and streams Miniature Canons. 
 
 IF one were to interrogate every seaside visitor as to 
 the reason why, when each summer gradually 
 steals round, he wends his way to the wave-washed 
 coast, and were to ask him why he is not content to 
 remain amidst the surroundings of our beautiful 
 Metropolis, his answer would in all probability be that 
 he is anxious to obtain a change of air and scenery, 
 and throwing aside the restraints of business, to seek 
 above all things rest. He thus repairs to the sea 
 coast, and enters with spirit into the enjoyments 
 which the place affords, until suddenly he awakes to a 
 feeling of uneasiness, and asks himself, ' What shall I 
 do next ?' 
 
 If anyone who reads these lines happens to light 
 upon the pretty little town of Felixstowe, and finds the
 
 Natural Science Jottings from Felixstowe. 101 
 
 time hang heavily on his hands, I would ask him to 
 make an effort towards obtaining additional pleasure 
 from his visit by paying a little attention to what is 
 called the natural science of the place, and to note 
 down any points of interest which he may glean during 
 his visit. 
 
 A glance at a map would show that Harwich is 
 situated nearly at the mouth of the estuary of the 
 Orwell, whilst opposite to that town a low-lying 
 promontory stands out from the left bank of the river, 
 and runs out to sea, with Felixstowe Railway Pier and 
 the Fort at its termination. The promontory is about 
 two miles and a half long, and takes its start from an 
 old line of sea cliffs, which have been denuded by the 
 river and the sea to form the long stretch of low 
 ground of which the point consists. Continuing a 
 short distance northward, the line of cliffs approaches 
 the sea, and here, both above and below the cliffs, the 
 town of Felixstowe stands. It was noticeable that, 
 whereas on our south coasts the beach, being washed 
 up the English Channel from the Atlantic, accumulated 
 on the west sides of the groynes, on this part of the 
 east coast the source of beach was from the north, and 
 the groynes, such as they were, became filled on 
 their northern side, whilst that on the south remained 
 empty. When, therefore, the promontory in question 
 commenced to be formed, in Pleistocene times, by the 
 accumulation of mud brought down by the river 
 Orwell, it received great assistance in its formation by
 
 102 Natural Science Jottings from Felixstowe. 
 
 what would appear to be in this part the prevailing 
 southerly current. The deposit of river mud, trending 
 in a south-easterly direction, received the full force of 
 the sea current on its northern face, and here wide 
 banks of sand and shingle accumulated, extending its 
 area and receiving the denuded fragments of the cliffs 
 to the north. 
 
 The Norfolk and Suffolk cliffs are most interesting 
 from a geological point of view. A series of forma- 
 tions extends for some distance inland, now well known 
 as the ' Crag,' which mark, by the littoral character of 
 their deposition, the limit of the ocean which existed 
 in Pliocene times. From Cromer, in the north, to 
 Clacton-on-Sea, in Essex, we find, in the sea-cliffs, a 
 succession of deposits which illustrate very forcibly 
 both by their composition and by the fossil remains 
 imbedded in them, the slow change which gradually 
 came over the climate of the country. At Clacton the 
 greater part of the cliffs consists of London clay, an 
 extension of that bed northward which underlies the 
 whole of London, but which, in Suffolk, becomes 
 overlaid by the crag formations. The general in- 
 clination of the beds is at an angle of thirty-five degrees 
 to the north, so that as we recede from London along 
 the coast we find the older beds sinking beneath our 
 feet, whilst those of more recent date occupy their 
 place ; by means of the character of their fossils we 
 are thus able to trace the gradual declension of climate 
 which took place, which finally culminated in the
 
 Natural Science Jottings from Felixstowe. 103 
 
 glacial Pleistocene epoch to which we have before 
 referred. 
 
 At Felixstowe the cliffs behind the houses are com- 
 posed, for the most part, of ' red crag,' whilst the stiff 
 blue London clay appears beneath and forms their 
 basement. The line of junction is very marked, and 
 oftentimes includes a layer of water-worn London clay 
 ' cement-stones,' amongst which frequently occur the 
 remains of the mastodon and other large mam- 
 mals. 
 
 The London clay is familiar to all, but the Red Crag 
 may not be so well known. The rusty colour which 
 characterises its sand, and which has stained all the 
 included shells red, causes its fossils to be easily re- 
 cognised when seen in a museum, and has given to it 
 the name which it bears. The fossil-hunter could never 
 be more sure of success in his searches than when enter- 
 ing a red crag pit. Some parts of the cliff, in the very 
 midst of Felixstowe, are literally packed with fossils, 
 although, unfortunately, owing to their brittleness, 
 many are in a broken condition. Many perfect 
 specimens can, however, be obtained, and amongst 
 them will at once be noticed the reversed whelk, 
 Fusus contrarius, so called from its whorls being in a 
 contrary direction to that characterising the whelk of 
 the present day. In some places occur bands of iron- 
 stone, where the oxide of iron, to which the whole 
 formation is indebted for its redness, has appeared in 
 more than ordinary strength. A characteristic fossil
 
 IO4 Natural Science Jottings from Felixstowe. 
 
 is the earbone of the whale, whilst the teeth of sharks 
 occur in great abundance in some parts. 
 
 The beach in front of the town is well worth 
 examining. Some people are said to have discovered 
 carnelians and other rare stones. This is quite 
 possible agates, jasper, carnelian, chrysophrase, etc., 
 being but different forms of silica, or as we better 
 know it flint. I have found sharks' teeth washed up 
 by the sea, and also portions of fossils imbedded in 
 flint. The rocks north of the town consist of large 
 blocks of London clay which are covered at high 
 tide by the sea. Shells, starfish, and wood, can be seen 
 imbedded therein, whilst the veins of spar which 
 permeate the masses, and which cause the nodules 
 to become known as ' snake-stones,' are seen very 
 clearly in these rocks at low tide. The collector, too, 
 will be able to add something to his museum by 
 searching among the rocks for pieces of fossil wood, 
 petrified into iron-pyrites, and exhibiting when broken 
 the brassy appearance common to that mineral. 
 
 At one time the London clay which forms the bed 
 of the sea was the repository of large quantities of 
 cement-stones which were washed out of the clay, but 
 the dredging which was carried on for years made so 
 great an inroad into what was once a natural break- 
 water, that now the landowners to the north of 
 Felixstowe are put to great pains and expense to erect 
 artificial breakwaters, to prevent the encroachments 
 of the sea. The fossil contents of both the most
 
 Natural Science Jottings from Felixstowe. 105 
 
 northerly and the most southerly portions of the red 
 crag have been carefully compared, and it has been 
 found that, whereas the shells contained in those 
 portions which rest immediately on the London clay 
 exhibit the characters of shells inhabiting a warm 
 climate, those found farther north begin to differ so 
 far from them, that it has been concluded that the 
 latter part of the crag was deposited long after the 
 former, and that the climate had so far cooled as not 
 to permit of certain shells living which had existed 
 when the formation commenced to be laid down. 
 This was borne out by the fact that shells of a more 
 Arctic character made their appearance in the north 
 which are not to be found in the south. The dis- 
 covery, therefore, went to support the theory of the 
 gradual declension of the climate which went on in 
 these times. 
 
 Felixstowe is situated on a peninsula, having the 
 river Orwell for its southern boundary, whilst on the 
 north it is bounded by the river Deben. This is not 
 a very well-known river, and it is scarcely used at all 
 for navigation, although, at its mouth, it is as wide as 
 the Thames at London Bridge. The result has been 
 that it has become silted up in great part, and sand- 
 banks have accumulated around the submerged forest 
 which existed a short distance from the coast. The 
 banks are laid bare at low tide, and have the 
 appearance of a number of islands. On the opposite 
 side of the river is a large red-brick mansion, built by
 
 106 Natural Science Jottings from Felixstowe. 
 
 Mr. Cuthbert Quilter, M.P. The river offers first- 
 rate fishing to the angler, whilst for sailing it equals 
 many of the Broads. On the south side are the 
 famous Bawdsley Golf Links, about four miles from 
 Felixstowe. An island at the mouth of the river pre- 
 sented, at the time I saw it, a remarkable resemblance 
 to one of the coral islands of the Pacific of which one 
 often reads. A circular fringe of sand-rock appeared 
 to have been formed, perhaps assisted in its induration 
 by the red oxide of iron washed from the cliffs with 
 the sand of the crag, whilst inside the circle was a 
 lagoon of smooth water, noticeable in contrast to the 
 breakers beating upon the outer edge. 
 
 On walking along the coast to the Deben, I could 
 not help noticing the number of springs issuing from 
 the cliffs, but which soon became lost in the beach and 
 sand. The rain, in sinking through the Red Crag 
 material, of which the upper part of the cliffs was 
 formed, was arrested when it arrived at the base of 
 London clay ; this, being impervious to water, gave 
 rise to the springs, which issued from the cliffs 
 where the junction of the two formations occurred. 
 One of these springs struck me as being very interest- 
 ing. It was evidently an old-established one, for it 
 had in the course of time formed a miniature delta of 
 its own. Just as the larger rivers have formed exten- 
 sive deltas at their mouths, so this spring had brought 
 down with it mud and sand, until it had accumulated 
 sufficient at its point of contact with the beach to pre-
 
 Natural Science Jottings from Felixstowe. 107 
 
 vent it at once from sinking out of sight. This 
 process of depositing sedimentary material had gone 
 on until an area of mud, about twelve feet long by 
 four broad, had become strewn out over the beach, 
 and the point where the spring at last disappeared was 
 some considerable distance from the cliff where it first 
 took its rise. 
 
 This occurred to me to be exactly the same process 
 on a small scale which is going on at the mouths of rivers 
 the Mississippi, for instance where every century 
 wide tracts of land are being formed at its mouth by 
 the deposition of sedimentary material brought down 
 from the higher ground. Nor was this the sole resem- 
 blance. The stream itself now only occupied a 
 central direction through the mud, and at the sides 
 the sediment had dried, only to be overflowed in times 
 of flood, similar to the rise which takes place in con- 
 nection with the Nile, and which is so anxiously 
 looked forward to by the fellaheen on account of the 
 fertile sediment it leaves behind it. 
 
 Although not personally familiar with the canons of 
 Colorado and Mexico, we have doubtless all read of 
 the precipitous chasms with^which the traveller there 
 meets, of the magnificent waterfalls and cascades 
 which leap down some hundreds of feet into the 
 narrow valleys below, and of the streams which far 
 away in the depths one can hear wending their way 
 over their rocky beds to join the larger rivers which 
 drain the lower lands. We have heard of the feelings
 
 io8 Natural Science Jottings from Felixstowe. 
 
 of wonder with which the traveller realizes the fact 
 that the constant dripping of the water has worn 
 away enormous quantities of rock, and has assisted 
 the rushing rivers below to excavate and carve out the 
 mighty canons at whose feet they now flow. It seems 
 almost humorous to say that I saw the same process 
 going on in a prosaic English town, but such in 
 miniature it really was. Felixstowe has only recently 
 given birth to its first local board, and much work there- 
 fore remains to be done. In the centre of the town a 
 road leads from the upper portion to that below the 
 cliffs. From a visitor's point of view the road is kept 
 very badly, or rather not kept at all. The result has 
 been that the showers of many years, descending on the 
 soft, porous, sandy soil, have excavated a number of 
 small river-courses, and their beds have been gradu- 
 ally deepened until now some of them make quite 
 respectable rivers after a fall of rain. One of these 
 I noticed, which had its source in a young waterfall. 
 At the point of the fall, I presume, the soil must have 
 been of a more yielding character than higher up, and 
 thus in years gone by the water had begun to carve 
 out a river-bed for itself. This process had gone on 
 until a depth of about four feet had been excavated, 
 simply by the falling of the water, and by the strength 
 given to it by the velocity acquired in descending 
 from a higher level. The process of carving out a 
 miniature canon had then begun, and now the water- 
 fall had receded some distance from where it
 
 Natural Science Jottings from Felixstowe. 109 
 
 evidently commenced operations. Thus it appeared 
 to me that this precipitous chasm in the road, down 
 which, by-the-bye, it was decidedly dangerous to travel 
 after nightfall, presented the principal features in 
 miniature of one of the mighty canons of Mexico. 
 
 The country around Felixstowe is exceedingly pretty, 
 and the botanist will find many rare plants in the 
 vicinity. Of the living objects on the seashore, the 
 small compound animal flustra of course is very 
 common, and is often mistaken for a seaweed. 
 Corallines of various species abound, whilst here and 
 there, under the rocks, we see the green and red 
 anemones with their gorgeous flower-like plumes. The 
 visitor to the seaside need never waste an hour, for 
 whilst engaged in the pursuit of Nature he can be 
 successfully engaged at the same time in the pursuit of 
 health.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 A PIECE OF SANDSTONE. 
 
 Sermons and stones Books and brooks What is sand ? Milk 
 and water How granite blocks are worn down to sand 
 Consolidated by iron oxide The Coral Rag of Oxfordshire 
 A reptilian bird. 
 
 WHAT about a piece of sandstone ? There surely 
 cannot be much to interest one in so common 
 a thing as this; we can pick up stones almost anywhere 
 around us. We know very well that some are very hard, 
 whilst others are so fragile that they crumble away as 
 we handle them into a thousand thousand grains of 
 sand. But we do not see much in it to entertain us. 
 We who have to work to provide both for ourselves 
 and for others, have little time to inquire into the why 
 and wherefore of such a thing as a piece of sand- 
 stone. 
 
 Well, let me see if I can interest you even in this, 
 and cause you perhaps to regard it in a more favour- 
 able manner. Shakespeare says there are sermons to 
 be found in stones, and bo ks in the running brooks.
 
 A Piece of Sandstone. in 
 
 We shall see presently that brooks have a good deal to 
 do with the shaping of stones, in the same way that 
 books have a great deal to do with the shaping and 
 formation of modern sermons, so that Shakespeare's 
 analogy has perhaps far more depth of meaning than 
 we are accustomed to see in it. 
 
 All holiday-keepers have experienced the pleasurable 
 sensation of walking over the beautiful crisp sands at 
 our various seaside towns, and perhaps have wondered 
 what it is that goes to make sand. You take a hand- 
 ful, and watch it trickling between your fingers, 
 forming as it falls to the ground little hillocks or 
 miniature mountains. You at once observe that it is 
 made up of innumerable grains so tiny that it is difficult 
 to say, See, I have a single grain of sand. Now, all these 
 grains must have had an origin. In all probability the 
 mass of sand is of a greenish tint, although you will 
 occasionally see little black specks which at once 
 show that all the grains are not alike in colour, or in 
 composition. Perhaps tiny fragments of a mineral 
 known as mica have become mixed with the greenish 
 sand, having been derived from what are known as 
 primitive rocks, whose cliffs have been beaten and 
 thrashed by the waves in those localities where they 
 form the coast, as in Cornwall and Wales. Here 
 they have been compelled to give up their black 
 shining mica, which, when broken up into atoms, has 
 become mixed with our well-known sands. But all 
 these greenish-coloured grains, whence do they come ?
 
 ii2 A Piece of Sandstone. 
 
 To answer this, we must first of all find out of what 
 they are composed, and then, if we discover a coast of 
 rocks near which contain this mineral, we shall not be 
 far wrong in attributing the origin of the sand to these 
 rocks. Let us take, for instance, the sands at Brighton. 
 Now the coast here consists of cliffs of chalk. The 
 chalk is intersected both upwards and across by bands 
 of flints. Flints also occur throughout the mass in 
 the form of nodules. If we were to chemically 
 examine the sand we should find that it was composed 
 almost entirely of a mineral called silex, which is a 
 compound of silicon and oxygen. But flint, when 
 examined, is found also to- consist of silex ; therefore 
 flint and sand ara chemically the same, the only 
 difference being an apparent one. The flint contains 
 the material of some millions of grains of sand 
 chemically precipitated, and it may consequently be 
 crushed artificially, and be made to produce sand. 
 The sand will naturally not be quite pure silex, as 
 while the flints are being washed out of the chalk to 
 form sand, the chalk at the same time suffers erosion, 
 and its grains, which are not sand (or silex), will be 
 mixed with the sand. It seems strange that the chalk 
 grains are not more intermingled with the sand. But 
 at the base of the cliffs to the east of Brighton, at high 
 tide, the water will be seen to assume a milky appear- 
 ance owing to the presence of the chalk. This source 
 is, however, not drawn upon for the milk-supply of 
 town (as someone may perhaps suggest).
 
 A Piece of Sandstone. 113 
 
 Chalk and flint beds do not, however, occur every- 
 where on our coasts. Whence comes, for instance, 
 the sand of such granite districts as Cornwall ? Why, 
 from the granite itself. There we find hundreds of 
 rivers, streams, and brooks, all wending their way sea- 
 wards. Each river and stream wears the surface of 
 the granite pebble-bed over which it flows. Some- 
 times large blocks are carried down by the currents, 
 and, knocked and tossed about against each other, 
 are ground down at last to powder. Follow the 
 course of such a block. See it start as an angular 
 fragment of granite. Watch its progress and note its 
 continual diminution in size. Also note particularly 
 that all its angular edges are broken off, and ask 
 if such a rounded, water-worn boulder is the same 
 that started on its seaward course from the Cornish 
 granite height. I have sometimes found such a 
 rounded piece of granite on the Brighton beach itself, 
 washed up the channel from some primitive district 
 by the tides and currents. What has become of these 
 ground-down fragments ? They have been borne sea- 
 wards, have perhaps formed the sand in the beds of 
 streams, and have been used, in a similar manner to 
 that in which we use emery-powder, to further the work 
 of polishing the stones in the beds of rivers whilst 
 being carried forward by the current. Granite is a 
 highly silicated mineral. Of its components, felspar, 
 quartz, and mica, felspar often contains as much as 65 
 per cent, of silica, mica never less than 40 per cent., 
 
 8
 
 ii4 A Piece of Sandstone. 
 
 while quartz is, as is well known, the purest form 
 of silex known. Thus we see that quartz and flint 
 are of identical composition. We have, therefore, in 
 granite all the necessaries to form sand. 
 
 In examining the contents of the beds of the 
 various streams which intersect Dartmoor, I found 
 these constituents of granite in every size and shape. 
 One little pool at the side of a stream was banked up 
 in the direction of the flow of the current so that the 
 water which it received did not escape directly. Here 
 the matter held in suspension had been deposited. 
 Little pebbles, some more rounded, some less rounded, 
 were intermingled with fine sand. Sometimes in these 
 quiet pools stones of value are found, such as the 
 garnet, tourmaline, Derbyshire-spar, and iron pyrites. 
 These ' accessory ' minerals are therefore occasionally 
 found in the granite, although of course forming but 
 an insignificant portion of it. They contain a large 
 percentage of silica, and are in time worn down to a 
 fine sand. 
 
 Our piece of sandstone, however, has by some means 
 or other become agglomerated into a compact mass. 
 We must therefore examine some of the various 
 agencies which are at work consolidating sand into 
 hard sandstone. Extreme pressure is perhaps as 
 potent an agent as any. The most consolidated sand- 
 stone is always loose enough to enable us to scratch 
 grains therefrom. Flint has been deposited by chemi- 
 cal agencies in the past, and is seen now undergoing
 
 A Piece of Sandstone. 115 
 
 chemical deposition in many hot-water springs. Sand- 
 stone on the other hand is the mere mechanical ag- 
 glomeration and consolidation of grains of sand. This 
 consolidation is brought about often by the percola- 
 tion of an acid through its mass. The continual 
 dribbling through sand of water charged with the per- 
 oxide of iron, whilst hardening it, changes the whole 
 of its aspect. All have doubtless noticed the red 
 sands south of Red Hill, from which the town derives 
 its name. These have been coloured by the oxide 
 of iron ; iron sandstone, or ironstone, as it is called, 
 being plentiful in Surrey and Sussex. There are 
 some inland beds of sand which have been found 
 broken through by a volcanic dyke. Where this has 
 happened, the sand has undergone a strange meta- 
 morphism. The heat of the protruding mass of fiery 
 matter from below has changed the adjacent sandstone 
 into a shining chert-like substance. The action has 
 in some cases altered the aspect of the fossils found 
 in the bed in a similar manner. It is especially 
 noticeable in beds of the Coral Rag, a secondary 
 formation, in which fossil corals are abundant. 
 
 Thus we have seen how a piece of sandstone has 
 originated and of what it is composed. Sandstones 
 are not all of the same degree of fineness. A bed 
 occurs in the Coal formation which is largely drawn 
 upon for the supply of millstones and grinding stones. 
 It is called the Millstone Grit, a grit being a sand- 
 stone in which the particles measure, perhaps, i-i6th
 
 n6 A Piece of Sandstone. 
 
 of an inch square, and are plainly visible to the naked 
 eye. 
 
 Other sandstones occur which are very finely grained. 
 Such an one is the Lithographic Sandstone of Ger- 
 many. This is largely used for lithographic printing, 
 owing to the fact that a section presents a naturally 
 even surface, the grains being so small that they are, 
 singly, almost invisible. 
 
 This Lithographic Sandstone is the geologists' para- 
 dise. It has yielded innumerable very important 
 animal remains. This is almost what we might have 
 expected, the fine sedimentary deposit taking the im- 
 print of remains imbedded in it with faithful certainty. 
 In it have been found the remains of that half-bird, 
 half-reptile, Archceopteryx, which are to be seen in the 
 Natural History Museum at South Kensington. 
 
 Can I then say in conclusion that a sandstone has 
 some elements of interest in it? Perhaps my reader 
 will look in future a little more kindly on the dry 
 stone which he treads beneath his feet, even though 
 after all it be but a piece of sandstone.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 A FEW FACTS ABOUT THE ROMAN WALL ROUND 
 LONDON. 
 
 London in Caesar's time Its early trade The Wall When 
 built Tiles, sandstone and cement To be built into the new 
 Post Office buildings Other fragments. 
 
 T~) ECENT excavations in the neighbourhood ot 
 JLV St. Martin's-le-Grand have brought to light an 
 exceptionally fine portion of the old London Wall, 
 which once surrounded the city of London ; and con- 
 siderable interest has been manifested in this relic, 
 fifteen hundred years old, of the time when Britain 
 owned the almost universal sway of Rome. 
 
 To call to mind the Lun-don, or Lyndon, of the 
 time of Julius Caesar's second invasion in 54 B.C., we 
 must imagine a Celtic hill-fortress on Tower Hill, 
 with extensions, perhaps, as far as Cornhill and Lud- 
 gate ; to the north a wide extent of moor and marsh, 
 covered in great part by a thick forest, affording ample 
 protection from hostile tribes, at a time when Moor-
 
 n8 A Few Facts about the Roman Wall. 
 
 fields was really what its name implies, and when the 
 stream of Wall-brook flowed along the western bound- 
 ary of the city, while farther west the Fleet river, 
 flowing on the present site of Faringdon Street, 
 poured its navigable waters into Father Thames at 
 Blackfriars. Even as early as the reign of Augustus, 
 British merchants are mentioned by Strabo as trading 
 with the merchants of the Seine and Rhine, in dogs, 
 iron, and other products ; so that while Caesar found 
 Britain to a great extent in a state of savagery, he also 
 found that in certain towns she had advanced some- 
 what in the paths of civilization, as evinced by her 
 trade with foreign parts. 
 
 The Romans withdrew from Britain about A.D. 448, 
 this giving about 500 years as the length of their stay. 
 There is no doubt that under Roman sway Britain 
 advanced rapidly towards civilisation, and, adopting 
 the advice which Agricola gave on the completion 
 of his conquest of Britain, viz., to study the arts of 
 peace, London, then Londinium, laid the basis of 
 her subsequent greatness by drawing to herself the 
 commerce of the nations. Tacitus, in A.D. 62, tells us 
 that Londinium was highly celebrated for the number 
 of its merchants and the wealth of its commerce. 
 
 It was not, however, until the fourth century that 
 the great Roman wall was built. Constantine the 
 Great is said to have reared it, and also to have chris- 
 tened London by the name of Augusta, in honour of 
 his mother. The walls were afterwards repaired by
 
 A Few Facts about the Roman Wall. 119 
 
 Theodosius, and London became one of the first of 
 the seventy Roman cities of Britain. They were also 
 subsequently repaired by Alfred the Great, when he 
 had regained possession of the city after its sack by 
 the Danes. 
 
 According to Pennant, the wall was more than three 
 miles in circumference, twenty-two feet high, and pos- 
 sessed forty lofty towers. Commencing at the river 
 on the east side of the Tower, the wall took a north- 
 westerly course, up the Minories to the Ealdgate, or 
 old-gate (Aldgate) ; it then continued by Houndsditch 
 to Bishopsgate, where, turning due west, it followed 
 the direction of London Wall to St. Giles's Church, 
 Cripplegate. Turning south for a short distance, the 
 wall ran to Falcon Square, whence again running to 
 the west, it crossed Aldersgate, and arriving at New- 
 gate, turned southward through the old Bailey to the 
 river. 
 
 The section recently exposed at St. Martin's-le- 
 Grand is now in the finest state of preservation, 
 and is situate in that portion of the wall running 
 between Falcon Square and Newgate. Its site can 
 easily be fixed by those who remember the French 
 Protestant Church in Aldersgate Street, since the 
 wall ran immediately beneath the church. Standing 
 at the end of the section, and looking easterly along 
 its direction, it is seen to pass immediately under the 
 party-wall which divides the two houses on the oppo- 
 site side of the street, on one of which appears the
 
 I2O A Few Facts about the Roman Wall. 
 
 street-name 'Aldersgate Street,' while on the other 
 appears ' St. Martin's-le-Grand.' This, then, marks the 
 site of the old 'Alders-gate,' the one house being now, 
 doubtless, in a separate parish from that of the other. 
 
 The wall exposed is about fourteen feet in height, 
 the upper portions having been removed to make 
 room for cellars, etc., which were seen to be resting 
 upon it. 
 
 On a foundation of a foot and a half of ragstone, 
 irregularly hewn, rested a double layer of red tiles 
 to a thickness of about five inches. On these was 
 a thickness of three feet of regularly-hewn sandstone 
 blocks, from a foot to a foot-and-a-half in length by 
 eight inches in height. Immediately above was an- 
 other layer of red tiles, similar in character to the 
 previous layer, and again succeeding this was a thick- 
 ness of about 2\ feet of sandstone blocks. In the 
 same way tiles again followed, covered again by sand- 
 stone. Altogether five layers of tiles were noticeable, 
 although the two uppermost had been considerably 
 disturbed by building operations. At each layer of 
 tiles it was observed that advantage had been taken 
 to set back the succeeding blocks of sandstone, so 
 that looking from above, the set-off in the height of 
 14 feet was about ij feet. The thickness of the wall 
 at the base was said to be 15 feet. 
 
 The tiles were i| inches thick, 18 inches long, and 
 1 2 inches wide, placed alternately with their long and 
 short edges to the face of the wall.
 
 A Few Facts about the Roman Wall. 121 
 
 The cement consisted of lime, sand, small gravel, 
 and a sprinkling of powdered tile. The wall ran 
 almost parallel to what was formerly Bull and Mouth 
 Street. This street, as is well known, has been en- 
 tirely removed to clear a space for the new buildings 
 in connection with the Post Office. In a book pub- 
 lished in 1823, the name of the street is said to have 
 been derived from the old Boulogne Mouth Inn, 
 which formerly stood in the street. In accordance 
 with the way in which the name was pronounced, this 
 was soon corrupted to 'Bull and Mouth' Inn, and 
 hence the name of the street. It is noteworthy that 
 the wall ends abruptly at the western boundary of the 
 parish of St. Botolph Within, whilst that which ex- 
 tended into the parish of Christ Church had been re- 
 moved for the excavation of deep cellars. 
 
 Fragments of the Roman Wall are still to be seen 
 in other places, but having generally been built into 
 recent walls they are not always accessible to the public. 
 A fragment can be seen at the graveyard of Saint 
 Alphege, in London Wall, almost entirely, however, 
 covered with ivy ; in 1852 a piece was built into some 
 stables on Tower Hill ; and remains are to be found 
 behind the houses in the Old Bailey. In Thames 
 Street a recent excavation showed that beneath the 
 foundation of hewn sandstone was to be found a layer 
 of chalk and stones, while these in turn were supported 
 by oaken piles, driven doubtless into the soft mud of 
 the water's edge.
 
 122 A Few Facts about the Roman Wall. 
 
 While the front of the wall everywhere presented a 
 somewhat even surface, the interior was filled up by 
 large blocks of irregular sandstone rubble, the crevices 
 being filled up by the mortar or cement previously 
 mentioned. 
 
 The old Roman city, then, extended from Ludgate 
 in the west to the Tower in the east, a distance of 
 about a mile, whilst from north to south it extended 
 from London Wall to the river, a distance of about 
 half a mile. 
 
 The relic of Roman times known as ' London Stone ' 
 situated in Cannon Street, in the wall of Swithin's 
 Church, is supposed by some authorities to be the 
 central milestone from which the various roads to 
 different parts of the Kingdom were measured; this 
 supposition is borne out by the fact that the dis- 
 tances hence to the old Roman stations in many cases 
 coincide with each other. 
 
 The first Roman wall and the less known one, for 
 there were two, does not include so large an area as 
 that wittf which we are all more or less familiar. The 
 first had its course on the north along Cornhill and 
 Leadenhall Street, on the east Billiter Street and 
 Mark Lane, on the south Thames Street, and on the 
 west Walbrook. Roman sepulchres have been found 
 in Bow Lane, Moorgate Street, and Bishopsgate Street 
 Within, these having been used as burial grounds, 
 in accordance with Roman sanitary law, which 
 allowed of such places only outside the city. In
 
 A Few Facts about the Roman Wall. 123 
 
 digging for the foundations of the Exchange, a gravel- 
 pit was come upon filled with rubbish, such as broken 
 pottery, old sandals, etc., but no coin was found 
 therein later than the reign of the Emperor Severus, 
 showing that up till the end of the third century the 
 ground was open waste outside the original city. In 
 the next century (the fourth) the second and greater 
 wall was built, most likely by Constantine, and the 
 burial grounds removed to without the Eald-gate and 
 the Tower, or rather where the Tower now is. Some 
 have supposed that the White Tower was built by 
 Julius Caesar, while others believe it to have been 
 commenced by William I. 
 
 The portion of the wall lying at St. Martin's-le-Grand 
 has been examined by numerous antiquarian visitors, 
 and the authorities have been prevailed upon to pre- 
 serve so perfect a relic of the Roman occupation, by 
 causing it to be built into the wall which will form 
 the northern boundary of the new buildings.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 THE following table has been prepared in order that the reader who 
 wishes to learn the zoological classification of the creatures which have 
 been dealt with in the foregoing pages may obtain at a glance the 
 information he requires. Commencing with the lowest form of life 
 known, it ascends through the various stages of organisation, culminat- 
 ing finally with the highest and most organised of all. 
 
 
 SCIENTIFIC GENUS, 
 
 
 SUB- 
 
 FAMILIAR NAME. 
 
 OR FAMILY. 
 
 CLASS. 
 
 KINGDOM. 
 
 Amceba 
 
 Amoebea 
 
 Rhizopoda 
 
 I. 
 
 Protozoa 
 
 
 Foraminifer (Globigerina) 
 Polycystinx (in Atlantic 
 
 Foraminifera 
 Radiolaria 
 
 " 
 
 " 
 
 
 ooze) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 II. 
 
 
 Sponge 
 
 Spongillus 
 
 Spongida 
 
 Coelenterata 
 
 
 Corallines (polypite) 
 Dead-men's-fingers 
 Sea-anemone 
 
 Sertularia 
 Alcyonidae 
 Actinidas 
 
 Hydrozoa 
 Actinozoa 
 
 " 
 
 
 Red coral (polype) 
 Massive coral 
 
 Gorgonidae 
 Madreporidae 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 in. 
 
 
 Starfish 
 
 Asteria 
 
 Asteroidea 
 
 Echinoder- 
 
 
 
 
 
 mata 
 
 ,__ 
 
 Sea-urchin 
 
 ( Echinus, 
 I Diadema / 
 
 Echinoidea 
 
 
 3 
 a 
 
 Lily Encrinite 
 
 Encrinus 
 
 Crinoidea 
 
 >, 
 
 3- 
 g. 
 
 
 
 
 IV. 
 
 
 Insects 
 
 
 
 Insecta 
 
 Annulosa 
 
 !1 
 
 Serpula 
 
 Tubicola 
 
 
 
 (V 
 
 Acorn-shell 
 
 Balanus 
 
 Crustacea 
 
 
 
 Barnacle 
 
 Lepas anatifera 
 
 
 
 
 Lobster 
 
 Astacus 
 
 
 
 ',', 
 
 
 Sea-mat (polypide) 
 Gribble-worm 
 
 Flustra foliacea 
 Limnorea terebrans 
 
 Polyzoa 
 Acephala 
 
 V. 
 
 Mollusca 
 
 
 Ship-worm 
 
 Teredo navalis 
 
 
 
 
 Whelk, reversed 
 
 Fusus contrarius 
 
 Gasteropoda 
 
 
 
 Scallop 
 
 Pecten 
 
 Lammelli- 
 
 
 
 Oyster 
 
 Ostrea 
 
 branchiata 
 
 
 
 Pearl oyster 
 
 Meleagrina mean- 
 
 ,, 
 
 
 
 
 grina 
 
 
 
 
 Cyrena (marble) 
 Mussel 
 
 Cyrena 
 Mytilus edulis 
 
 
 
 
 
 Razor-shells (borers) 
 
 Pholas 
 
 '.' 
 

 
 Appendix. 
 
 FAMILIAR NAME. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC GENUS, 
 OR FAMILY. 
 
 ORDER. 
 
 CLASS. 
 
 Shark, teeth of 
 
 Carcharodon 
 
 Chondropterygii Pisces 
 
 
 Iguanodon, greatWealden 
 
 Iguanodon Mantelli 
 
 Dinosauria 
 
 Reptilia 
 
 < - 
 
 reptile 
 
 
 
 
 re 
 
 Bird, fossil 
 Marsupials, kangaroo, etc. 
 
 Archseopteryx 
 Macropus, etc. 
 
 Saururae 
 Marsupialia 
 
 Aves 
 Mammalia 
 
 n 
 u- 
 
 Earbone of whale 
 
 Cetotolithes 
 
 Cetacea 
 
 
 y 
 
 Mastodon, fossil elephant 
 
 Elephas primigenius 
 
 Ungulata (Pro- 
 
 
 re 
 
 
 
 boscoidea) 
 
 
 Ul 
 
 Man 
 
 Homo 
 
 Primates 
 
 >. 
 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Elliot Stock, Paternoster R<rw, London.