Aug. 1, 1S69.] 



HAEDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



175 



A"SABMENT" IN A SUSSEX STONE-PIT. 

 By Henry L. Watts, M.A., Ph.D. 



SOME time back, while making a geological 

 expedition in the above-named county, I 

 visited a stone-quarry which had then been recently 

 opened for the purpose of obtaining materials for 

 the erection of 'a large building in the neighbour- 

 hood, and watched with much interest the opera- 

 tions of the men employed in it, as, with their 

 picks, wedges, sledge-hammers, and crowbars, they 

 toiled at the rigid substance they sought to remove 

 from its rocky bed. These men, to the number of 

 eighteen or twenty, were not only entirely ignorant 

 of the word " geology," but testified their rustic 

 wonderment that I should spend my time in looking 

 on so eagerly as they drove their wedges into the 

 stony layers, and should watch with such 

 " deediness," as they called it, each fracture they 

 made in the ponderous masses around them. 



I occasionally worked with them, whenever I saw 

 that a little addition of muscular force was needed 

 to effect the translocation of a piece of rock from 

 its original " situs," and therefore, as these men 

 worked " by the piece," that is, were paid by the 

 cubical contents of what they obtained for the use 

 of the mason, I was looked upon as no unwelcome 

 intruder into the province of their labours. 



With the aid of my pocket microscope I soon 

 succeeded in opening to some extent the eyes of 

 their understandings to the purpose of my visit, 

 by disclosing to them the fossil remains of myriads 

 of minute animals that had lived before the con- 

 struction of the rocky tombs in which, while living, 

 they had been deposited. There they were, exhibit- 

 ing the same integrity of form possessed by them 

 in life, and the same brightness of enamel upon the 

 surface of their shelly habitations, although count- 

 less thousands of years had passed away since, by 

 the sexton hand of Nature, they had thus become 

 entombed in earth, and therein had been so well 

 preserved. 



It was on a subsequent day, on my revisiting 

 the quarry at the hour of noon, when the labourers 

 had thrown down their implements of toil, and 

 taken out their pocket-knives, and were disinte- 

 grating comparatively huge lumps of fat pork and 

 genuine home-made bread, that one or two of them 

 came towards me, telling me that they had found 

 that morning something which they thought 

 " looked very much like the leg-bone of some big 

 animal." 



I knew that this quarry was located in what is 

 recognized by geologists as a part of the country of 

 the Iguanodon, and therefore when I came up to 

 the spot where this fossil relic was lying, I ex- 

 pressed no astonishment at the sight, as my com- 

 panions pointed it out and informed me that they 



" thought it best to let it bide as it was, just as they 

 lighted on it." 



" You were quite right ! " was my reply. It was, 

 indeed, the fossil petrifaction of the " bone of some 

 big animal," as the men had said. It was the 

 femur of a large iguanodon. The length of it was 

 about two feet and a half, horizontally half-imbed- 

 ded in the sandstone or its rocky matrix. 



As I sat upon a large stone close by, all the other 

 men had closely encompassed me, the chins of some 

 of them resting on the shoulders of others, while 

 several jaws were still engaged in masticating bread 

 and fat pork. One of the two who first came up to 

 me on my entering into the quarry, being somewhat 

 more of a savant than the rest, ventured to ask me 

 the question whether " that 'ere bone didn't belong 

 to one of they hanimals what was drownded in the 

 flood?" 



Here was a question I felt myself called upon to 

 answer, and thus was I drawn in to give an impro- 

 vised geological lecture or sermon. 



If I had not a very intelligent audience, I was 

 perfectly aware that several of them were much in- 

 terested in the subject of my discourse, as it then 

 was lying to view before them. The place in which 

 we were, presented one of the best lecture-rooms 

 for the geologist in which it has ever been my lot 

 to discuss telluric phenomena, or the natural his- 

 tory of the earth, as recorded on the pages of the 

 great Stone-book of Nature. I had no difficulty in 

 convincing my audience of the gradual formation of 

 the aqueous or sandstone rocks by the slow deposit 

 of loose soil or sand by the agency or action of 

 water. The parallel lines of stratification, as marked 

 in the leaves of a portion of that volume opened 

 around us, were diagrams most clearly demon- 

 strative of this great physical fact. My audience 

 more and more clustered around me, eager to catch 

 every word that fell from my lips, as though I had 

 been a messenger from some other and far-distant 

 world, to declare to them truths that before had 

 been so long concealed from them. 



" Dang it ! " said one of my auditors, " any chap 

 can see this now with half an eye," turning round 

 to his fellow quarrymen, and continuing his remarks, 

 as the truth came upon his mind, like a gladdening 

 flow of light into that which had been previously 

 obscured. 



"Why all this here rock has once been loose sile, 

 washed down by water from the hills and uplands, 

 else how could these bones be found in the stone if 

 they hadn't been afore the loose sand had corned to 

 be formed into hard rock ? " 



"But," said one of his comrades, "didn't you, 

 Jack, say that this here bone belonged to one of 

 them 'ere hanimals what was drownded at Noer's 

 deluge ? If it was, where's t'other part of the body; 

 for when it sunk and got kivered over with sich a 

 sight o' mud, while the flood lasted, and all that 'ere 



