158 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



covered at every tide. This was the field of my 

 operations, and I certainly found it very hard ground 

 to work upon. The chalk rocks, which have been 

 incessantly broken by the waves, are worn down to 

 the level of high water, forming a sort of irregular 

 causeway, which extends to a width of several hun- 

 dred yards. The strata, which have been bent and 

 twisted in all directions like the leaves of a book 

 that had been purposely crumpled, form a coast line 

 bristling with points and narrow ledges, and inter- 

 sected to a greater extent than I had ever observed 

 with openings and fissures. 



In the midst of this disorder there was no veo-eta- 



o 



tion, and no mud suitable to the abode of marine 

 animals, or adapted to their nourishment. On every 

 side lay pure sand, which was consequently unsuited 

 to animal life, or solid rocks, which showed between 

 their laminae the various creatures which I was 

 anxious to obtain to aid me in my zoological inqui- 

 ries. An ordinary pickaxe would have been of very 

 little use to me here ; but, knowing the nature of the 

 ground, I had provided myself with a very strong 

 spade, tipped with steel and terminated below by a 

 sharp point, and with this instrument I attacked the 

 foliaceous lamina of the compact limestone, which 

 was frequently superposed on quartz. Besides this 

 I had a hammer, and by the help of these tools my 

 flasks and bottles were soon tolerably well filled. 

 However, both here and at Biarritz, no less than at 

 Saint- Jean- de-Luz and at Saint Sebastian, I missed 

 that superabundance of marine animals to which I 

 had been accustomed in iny former excursions. The 



