IN NORFOLK BY THE SEA 167 



tracks. Here, where the mud is dry and cracked, *' 



these little crab-paths are well defined. And there in 

 all likelihood they will now remain until the end of 

 time. For the tides that follow will each in its turn 

 lay over the track a deposit of mud from the washings 

 of the muddy banks. And then as time goes on, 

 and pressure is added and clay-stone formed, and the 

 land raised up perhaps above the sea-level — well, then, 

 hundreds of thousands of years hence, an old pro- 

 fessor may come with his hammer and lecture on 

 these remarkable crustacean evidences. Why should 

 it not be so ? It has happened before. The very \ 

 oldest tracks known (they are there in the Cromwell ^ 

 Road) are those of a crab allied to Limulus the / — 

 king crab, who had a tail which dragged. And^ 

 because he lived so early and made as he walked 

 even little impressions on either side of his tail-mark, 

 they named him Protichnites septemnotatus^ though 

 no actual remains of him have ever been seen, or had 

 not when Sir Richard Owen wrote the facts which I 

 have given. 



Over there, where the sandhills are planted with 

 various kinds of pine, a pair of thick-knee or Norfolk \ 



plover * nested this year, for the first time on record. — * — . 

 * CEdicnemus scolopax (Gmelin) . '3f. <rz^' 



<Z> 



