Alcide d'Orhigny. 81 



scientific bosom could hardly fail to respond to a strong emotional 

 stimulus, as the mechanism which it controls stands at low tide 

 upon the sandy margin of the mud-flats of the Anse de I'Aiguillon, 

 radially scarred in all directions by the hurrying aeons of the 

 boucholeurs, for it is here that the boy Alcide must have wandered 

 continually in search of zoological and geological specimens, and 

 it is here that his scientific career received its first real impetus. 

 The expanse of strand between high water-mark and the cliffs, 

 which are known as " Lss Eochers d'Esnandes," is not more than 

 a few yards in some places, and never more than thirty, and it 

 presents a busy spectacle at all hours of the day as the houcholcurs 

 go out, come in, wash their mussels in pools which they dig on 

 the shore for the purpose, and load them upon the carts which take 

 them to market (Plate XI). At all times groups may be seen 

 attending to the hurdles which are being got ready to replace 

 superseded ones in the houchots, and it must be confessed that if 

 these people live wholly or for the most part upon Mollusca, as 

 d'Orbigny tells us {ante, p. 5), or are descended from a race of 

 rigid mytilophagists, they provide a powerful argument against 

 those who view all edible Lamellibranchs with mingled scorn and 

 suspicion. . 



At our feet are broad deposits of Foraminifera, lying either 

 upon the edges of the mud-flats or upon the sandy patches left 

 clean by the receding tide ; at our back are cliffs rising from the 

 earth by the eastward dip of the strata, so that as one walks to 

 the Pointe St. Clement he may note every zone at a level con- 

 venient for examination. They are composed of a friable white 

 Upper Jurassic chalk, from which Foraminifera can be washed 

 with great ease. D'Orbigny himself speaks of the " calcaire 

 jurassique du departement de la Charente Inferieure," in which 

 the preservation of the fossils in their natural condition seems 

 astonisliing.^ The formation according to the latest French 

 strati^raphists is the Sequanien ; they are what, for all practical 

 purposes, we may call in British terminology the Corallian zone 

 at the top of the Middle Oolite. In the " Cours Eleraentaire " 

 d'Orldgny places it in his " XIII™^ Etage, Oxfordien";- for him 

 the " XIY"^'' Etage, Corallien," ^ makes its appearance at Marsilly, 

 a few kilometres eastward. At Chatelaillon, which, as we have 

 seen, is farther south from La Kochelle, we are upon a higher zone 

 of the formation, distinguished by the modern French strati- 

 grapbists as " Pterocerien et Sequanien." The little town lies upon 

 an immense alluvial plain, the outcrops and substratum being 

 Upper Jurassic Marls, ranging in colour from yellow to deep blue, 

 of which d'Orbigny has given us a carefully worked out geological 



» I., p. 246. 2 XIV., vol. ii., pp. 523, 526-7, 



' XIV., vol. ii., pp. 538, 541-2. (See ante, p. 65.) 



Feb. 21st, 1917 G 



