THE FOSSIL-HUNTER'S SPORT 



the reader should visit many times the Natural 

 History Museum, see the actual specimens, and 

 by the aid of the illustrated guide-books get 

 to know more details about them. And if he 

 or she have the chance and can go and hunt 

 in some of the quarries or cliffs which are so 

 often full of fossils, an endless delight and 

 a health-giving pursuit is the prospect before 

 him or her. Fossil-hunting with hammer 

 and chisel and a bag to be laden with speci- 

 mens, is splendid exercise, and, if skilfully 

 conducted, an exciting form of sport. Even 

 within reach of a Londoner's day there are the 

 brickfields of Ilford and Grays, where I used to 

 get remains of mammoth, rhinoceros and such 

 beasts ; there are the chalk and tertiary strata 

 of Charlton in Kent full of fossils ; the Red 

 Crag pits of Suffolk ; the oolites of Oxford ; 

 the sponge-gravel of Farringdon. A very little 

 longer journey brings the fossil-hunter to the 

 Isle of Wight, which used to be, and I doubt 

 not still is, a magnificent preserve of Eocene, 

 Greensand and Wealden fossils ; and not further 

 off in length of journey are the Malvern 

 hills, with Silurian and Devonian strata 

 exposed in quarries and railway cuttings, 



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