Ven, Ware Cliffs--these names may mean very little
to you. But Lyme is situated in the center of one of the rare
outcrops of a stone known as blue lias. To the mere landscape
enthusiast this stone is not attractive. An exceedingly gloomy gray
in color, a petrified mud in texture, it is a good deal more
forbidding than it is picturesque. It is also treacherous, since its
strata are brittle and have a tendency to slide, with the consequence
that this little stretch of twelve miles or so of blue lias coast has
lost more land to the sea in the course of history than almost any
other in England. But its highly fossiliferous nature and its
mobility make it a Mecca for the British paleontologist. These last
hundred years or more the commonest animal on its shores has been
man--wielding a geologist's hammer.
Charles had already
visited what was perhaps the most famous shop in the Lyme of those
days--the Old Fossil Shop, founded by the remarkable Mary Anning, a
woman without formal education but with a genius for discovering
good--and on many occasions then unclassified--specimens. She was the
first person to see the bones of Ichthyosaurus platyodon; and one of
the meanest disgraces of British paleontology is that although many
scientists of the day gratefully used her finds to establish their
own reputation, not one native type bears the specific anningii. To
this distinguished local memory Charles had paid his homage--and his
cash, for various ammonites and Isocrina he coveted for the cabinets
that walled his study in London. However, he had one disappointment,
for he was at that time specializing in a branch of which the Old
Fossil Shop had few examples for sale.
This was the echinoderm,
or petrified sea urchin. They are sometimes called tests (from the
Latin testa, a tile or earthen pot); by Americans, sand dollars.
Tests vary in shape, though they are always perfectly symmetrical;
and they share a pattern of delicately burred striations. Quite apart
from their scientific value (a vertical series taken from Beachy Head
in the early 1860s was one of the first practical confirmations of
the theory of evolution) they are very beautiful little objects; and
they have the added charm that they are always difficult to find. You
may search for days and not come on one; and a morning in which you
find two or three is indeed a morning to remember. Perhaps, as a man
with time to fill, a born amateur, this is unconsciously what
attracted Charles to them; he had scientific reasons, of course, and
with fellow hobbyists he would say indignantly that the Echinodermia
had been "shamefully
neglected,"
a familiar justification for spending too much time in too small a
field. But whatever his motives he had fixed his heart on tests.
Now tests do not come
out of the blue lias, but out of the superimposed strata of flint;
and the fossil-shop keeper had advised him that it was the area west
of the town where he would do best to search, and not necessarily on
the shore. Some half-hour after he had called on Aunt Tranter,
Charles was once again at the Cobb.
The great mole was far
from isolated that day. There were fishermen tarring, mending their
nets, tinkering with crab and lobster pots. There were better-class
people, early visitors, local residents, strolling beside the still
swelling but now mild sea. Of the woman who stared, Charles noted,
there was no sign. But he did not give her--or the Cobb--a second
thought and set out, with a quick and elastic step very different
from his usual languid town stroll, along the beach under Ware
Cleeves for his destination. He would have made you smile, for he was
carefully equipped for his role. He wore stout nailed boots and
canvas gaiters that rose to encase Norfolk breeches of heavy flannel.
There was a tight and absurdly long coat to match; a canvas wideawake
hat of an indeterminate beige; a massive ash-plant, which he had
bought on his way to the Cobb; and a voluminous rucksack, from which
you might have
to you. But Lyme is situated in the center of one of the rare
outcrops of a stone known as blue lias. To the mere landscape
enthusiast this stone is not attractive. An exceedingly gloomy gray
in color, a petrified mud in texture, it is a good deal more
forbidding than it is picturesque. It is also treacherous, since its
strata are brittle and have a tendency to slide, with the consequence
that this little stretch of twelve miles or so of blue lias coast has
lost more land to the sea in the course of history than almost any
other in England. But its highly fossiliferous nature and its
mobility make it a Mecca for the British paleontologist. These last
hundred years or more the commonest animal on its shores has been
man--wielding a geologist's hammer.
Charles had already
visited what was perhaps the most famous shop in the Lyme of those
days--the Old Fossil Shop, founded by the remarkable Mary Anning, a
woman without formal education but with a genius for discovering
good--and on many occasions then unclassified--specimens. She was the
first person to see the bones of Ichthyosaurus platyodon; and one of
the meanest disgraces of British paleontology is that although many
scientists of the day gratefully used her finds to establish their
own reputation, not one native type bears the specific anningii. To
this distinguished local memory Charles had paid his homage--and his
cash, for various ammonites and Isocrina he coveted for the cabinets
that walled his study in London. However, he had one disappointment,
for he was at that time specializing in a branch of which the Old
Fossil Shop had few examples for sale.
This was the echinoderm,
or petrified sea urchin. They are sometimes called tests (from the
Latin testa, a tile or earthen pot); by Americans, sand dollars.
Tests vary in shape, though they are always perfectly symmetrical;
and they share a pattern of delicately burred striations. Quite apart
from their scientific value (a vertical series taken from Beachy Head
in the early 1860s was one of the first practical confirmations of
the theory of evolution) they are very beautiful little objects; and
they have the added charm that they are always difficult to find. You
may search for days and not come on one; and a morning in which you
find two or three is indeed a morning to remember. Perhaps, as a man
with time to fill, a born amateur, this is unconsciously what
attracted Charles to them; he had scientific reasons, of course, and
with fellow hobbyists he would say indignantly that the Echinodermia
had been "shamefully
neglected,"
a familiar justification for spending too much time in too small a
field. But whatever his motives he had fixed his heart on tests.
Now tests do not come
out of the blue lias, but out of the superimposed strata of flint;
and the fossil-shop keeper had advised him that it was the area west
of the town where he would do best to search, and not necessarily on
the shore. Some half-hour after he had called on Aunt Tranter,
Charles was once again at the Cobb.
The great mole was far
from isolated that day. There were fishermen tarring, mending their
nets, tinkering with crab and lobster pots. There were better-class
people, early visitors, local residents, strolling beside the still
swelling but now mild sea. Of the woman who stared, Charles noted,
there was no sign. But he did not give her--or the Cobb--a second
thought and set out, with a quick and elastic step very different
from his usual languid town stroll, along the beach under Ware
Cleeves for his destination. He would have made you smile, for he was
carefully equipped for his role. He wore stout nailed boots and
canvas gaiters that rose to encase Norfolk breeches of heavy flannel.
There was a tight and absurdly long coat to match; a canvas wideawake
hat of an indeterminate beige; a massive ash-plant, which he had
bought on his way to the Cobb; and a voluminous rucksack, from which
you might have
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