23 



Secondly, the fossils are to blame. If you had been collecting the 

 Tertiary shells of Barton Cliff, or the Isle of Wight, as I have been 

 doing myself for many years ; or if you had the good luck to fall in 

 with such a bed of inferior oolite as Professor Buckman has close at 

 his very door, you would probably be inclined to empty into the 

 nearest gutter a hamper of fossils from a Cornbrash quarry : poor- 

 looking specimens in themselves generally in the state of casts, and 

 these too often far from perfect they certainly are very unattractive' 

 if not contemptible. Probably I should never have condescended to 

 have noticed them myself but for a visit of my dear friend Pro- 

 fessor Phillips, whose surprise at the number of forms we discovered 

 in a single quarry first induced me to see how large a series could be 

 brought together. 



Again, there are sections in which even these poor specimens 

 almost entirely disappear. Amongst these I fear I must reckon the 

 Wey mouth section. For some reason or other I had imagined it to 

 be very rich in forms, and great was my disappointment when on a 

 visit to Radipole, just before our pleasant meeting at Weymouth, to 

 find that three miserably imperfect specimens one of them, of 

 course, being a valve of Avicula echinata were all I had to remem- 

 ber my visit by, in addition to a severe drenching. 



Again, in some of its economical aspects the Cornbrash is not of 

 much consequence. The lime made from it, though largely used, is 

 of inferior quality, and when I add to this that roads I won't say 

 mended, but covered by it are roads it is as well, if possible, to 

 avoid, I feel I have confessed to an awkward number of reasons for 

 despising my protege. 



Yet on all these points there is much to be said in defence of the 

 Cornbrash. The lands in which it crops to the surface are of very 

 considerable importance in corn-growing districts, and acres of such 

 soil are of higher value than 'those on its more aristocratic neigh- 

 bour forest marble. The multitude of rubbly stones covering the 

 entire surface of a field when ploughed, and suggesting at first the 

 impossibility of anything growing there except a few ill-natured and 

 intrusive weeds, really do very good service, and if a farmer, having 

 such lands, tried to clear his fields of such nuisances, he would have 

 to learn a lesson I once heard of as learnt at Cumberland. At great 

 expense a farmer cleared some acres of myriads of fragments of new 

 red sandstone to find that at equal expense he had to cart them all 

 back again. 



