58 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY ; OR, 



into the sea, that exhibits over its whiteness a lighter tint 

 of green, and, on the other, encroaching on the land, in the 

 form of drifted banks, covered with the plants common to 

 our tracts of sandy downs. The sandstone bed that has been 

 worn down to form it contains no fossils, save here and there 

 a carbonaceous stem ; but in an underlying harder stratum 

 we occasionally find a few shells ; and, with a specimen in my 

 hand charged with a group of bivalves resembling the existr- 

 ing conchifera of our sandy beaches, I was turning aside this 

 sand of the Oolite, so curiously reduced to its original state, 

 and marking how nearly the recent shells that lay embedded 

 in it resembled the extinct ones that had lain in it so long 

 before, when I became aware of a peculiar sound that it yield- 

 ed to the tread, as my companions paced over it. I struck 

 it obliquely with my foot, where the surface lay dry and in- 

 coherent in the sun, and the sound elicited was a shrill sono- 

 rous note, somewhat resembling that produced by a waxed 

 thread, when tightened between the teeth and the hand, and 

 tipped by the nail of the forefinger. I walked over it, striking 

 it obliquely at each step, and with every blow the shrill note 

 was repeated. My companions joined me ; and we performed 

 a concert, in which, if we could boast of but little variety in 

 the tones produced, we might at least challenge all Europe 

 for an instrument of the kind which produced them. It 

 seemed less wonderful that there should be music in the gra- 

 nite of Memnon, than in the loose Oolitic sand of the Bay 

 of Laig. As we marched over the drier tracts, an incessant 

 1000, WOO) woo, rose from the surface, that might be heard in 

 the calm some twenty or thirty yards away ; and we found 

 that where a damp semi-coherent stratum lay at the depth of 

 three or four inches beneath, and all was dry and incoherent 

 above, the tones were loudest and sharpest, and most easily 

 evoked by the foot. Our discovery, for I trust I may re- 

 gard it as such, adds a third locality to two previously 



