118 TOWN GEOLOGY. [v. 



likely to dredge a live Brachiopod will be in the deep 

 water of Loch Fyne, in Argyleshire, where two species 

 still linger, fastened, strangely enough, to the smooth 

 pebbles of a submerged glacier, formed in the open air 

 during the age of ice, but sunk now to a depth of 

 eighty fathoms. The first time I saw those shells 

 come up in the dredge out of the dark and motionless 

 abyss, I could sympathise with the feelings of mingled 

 delight and awe which, so my companion told me, the 

 great Professor Owen had in the same spot first beheld 

 the same lingering remnants of a primaeval world. 



The other might be (but I cannot promise you 

 even a chance of dredging that, unless you were off 

 the coast of Portugal, or the windward side of some of 

 the West India Islands) a live Crinoid; an exquisite 

 starfish, with long and branching arms, but rooted in 

 the mud by a long stalk, and that stalk throwing out 

 barren side branches; the whole a living plant of 

 stone. You may see in museums specimens of this 

 family, now so rare, all but extinct. And yet fifty or 

 a hundred different forms of the same type swarmed 

 in the ancient seas : whole masses of limestone are 

 made up of little else but the fragments of such 

 animals. 



But we have not landed yet on the dry part of the 

 reef. Let us make for it, taking care meanwhile that 

 we do not get our feet cut by the coral, or stung as by 

 nettles by the coral insects. We shall see that the dry 

 land is made up entirely of coral, ground and broken 

 by the waves, and hurled inland by the storm, some- 

 times in huge boulders, mostly as fine mud ; and that, 

 under the influence of the sun and of the rain, which 

 filters through it, charged with lime from the rotting 



