398 FOSSILS AND SHELLS. CHAP. xxm. 



them up, and putting them aside wrapt in paper, with 

 the locality where found marked upon them. 



"So I have got great numbers to overhaul. Last 

 winter I turned to them in good earnest, and tired 

 myself a hundred times over, putting them to one side, 

 and then turning to them again. I will get on slowly, 

 slowly ; but perseverance will do it." 



He went out to the hills again. But the rain often 

 stopped him, ceaseless, pitiless, pelting rain. "The rain," 

 he once said, "is killing me." But so soon as the 

 weather cleared, he was out again. "I have made a ten 

 hours' journey," he said in April 1866, "across the hills, 

 but I got no new mosses. I sought for sea-shells about 

 nine miles inland. I only got some little broken bits ; 

 but I found an entire half of the shell Astarte borealis. 

 It was something to find even that so far away from the 

 sea. Many, many changes have taken place since that 

 shell was deposited. A wood of trees afterwards grew 

 there. The wood perished, and peat moss, many feet 

 thick, covers it up. And underneath that, the shell was 

 found." 



At the beginning of the following month he was 

 again searching for fossils. "I have got," he says, 

 " some large and very strong fossil bones from the rocks. 

 I have seen nothing similar for twenty-three years. 

 The outlines of the larger bone I have tried to trace out 

 on this leaf" [gives a drawing of a fossil bone, about 

 twelve inches across]. 



A fortnight later he says " As I cannot be idle, I 

 have turned over again to break stones. I have nearly 



