ROOM IV. ICHTHYOSAURUS COMMUNIS. 379 



The skull of this species is wide behind, and rapidly contracts 

 to the base of the jaws, which are prolonged and sub-coin- 



for its extraction, being always covered with water, except for a brief 

 interval at the very lowest tides, that its removal appeared impossible, 

 and he willingly sold his right to the discovery to Mr. Hawkins. It was 

 upwards of a month after the purchase of this treasure of the deep, 

 before the tide was sufficiently low to allow of its being visible we will 

 now leave Mr. Hawkins to tell the story : 



"The best street of Lyme Regis is disfigured but all the world 

 knows this by an ugly market place, which has an ugly tower, sur- 

 mounted by an ugly fish to tell the way of the wind. To this most 

 ungainly place and puppet of a tower were my eyes directed with the 

 first sunbeam, and to the weather-cock my orisons went thrice seven 

 days in vain : there it stuck, with its mouth agape, as if to bugbear the 

 violent wind and storm, which blew all the time from the south and 

 west. Every day for upwards of three weeks I sought with a kind of 

 forlorn hope from the lofty cliffs, the sandstone rocks. 



" One day I arose in such imperturbable mood as disappointment like 

 this may be supposed to occasion, and gaped to see the brazen fish turn 

 tail, as much as he himself did at the hollow tempest that flitted by from 

 the rugged north. The weather had veered to the right quarter at last, 

 and if it continued a few hours I might accomplish my long deferred 

 hope : all my friends congratulated me. ' Make haste, the tide's going 

 out fast,' said Miss Anning, as I passed her on the way to the Ichthyo- 

 saurus. 



" Half a dozen of us, all lusty and eager for the occasion, meet : we 

 arrange the mode of exhumation, dispose our instruments, and wait the 

 crisis when the returning waves shall desert the remains. It arrives 

 ' let no one invade this' a square marked around the skeleton in the 

 marl, six feet and a half by three and a half. ' What d'ye think, Zur, to 

 dig un out a whcal,' exclaimed the Atlean Blue the best tempered but 

 unhappily bacchanal fellow that ever lived. 'Yes.' The tide goes 

 back back back our square is cut ten inches deep; I lessen its 

 length and breadth a foot: 'The crow-bars and pick-axes to loosen it 

 from its bed : now, my boys, now now : does it come up in one piece ? ' 

 ' Yeas, Zur.' 



" The spectators say the tide flows it does : we attempt to raise the 

 heavy mass upon its side, but our strength fails us ' 'tis more than we 

 can accomplish.' Assisted by several gentlemen who were spectators, it 

 is at length removed from its situation ' the tide flows fast' we try to 

 lift it into the vehicle prepared for its transport from the reach of 

 danger we cannot. ' You must break un in half, Zur.' ' No.' The 

 waters approach us they make a breach in the rude bank cast up by us 

 against them another billow and yet another they are at our heels: 

 ' One more trial, my boys, your own reward, if successful ye-o' the 

 saurus is safe ! When that beautiful thiug, of which our beautiful 

 plate is but a faint type, came forth at the magic touch of my chisel, 

 such a feeling possessed me as few can ever realize ! " Hawkins's 

 "Memoirs of Ichthyosauri " <tc. 



