48 Alexander Goodman More. fi854 



settling now and then on the stems and leaves of ammo- 

 phila, its dark colour well contrasted with the gayer livery 

 of the males of the common blue, which was in still greater 

 plenty. After walking towards the end of the strand for 

 about an hour, we turned our attention to the beach, and 

 here there is, indeed, an extraordinary accumulation of 

 fragments of shells of many kinds, especially Solen, 

 Cyprina, My tilus, Venus, Mactra, Donax, Tellina, Turritella 

 terebra, &c. ; we saw, however, but few unbroken speci- 

 mens, but the whole of the drier sand is quite whitened by 

 the intermixture of the pieces, and I daresay would prove 

 a valuable application for some lands that require lighten- 

 ing and lime at the same time. Skeletons of sea-urchins 

 were lying about bleaching in plenty, and great numbers 

 of a long-armed, curious crab,* were strewn about, some of 

 them transformed by the hot sand into very excellent and 

 perfect specimens. There were not the same quantity of 

 zoophytes that we saw at Liverpool,! but I believe it is 

 for shells that the Silver Strand is famous. The sand is 

 not, to my eye, any whiter than St. Helen's Spit. The 

 absence of trefoils was here, again, very striking." 



* Afterwards ascertained to be the Masked Crab, 

 t Near New Brighton, Feb. 2;th. 



