122 THE GEOLOGIST. 



their two prominent muscle-marks, strew the cindery-looking 

 ground ; while here and there, Hke horny flakes, are the thin angular 

 fihell-pieces of PoUicipes. 



Little from its present shattered state is to be got from the blue 

 clay at Copt Point, but it was a rare field for fossils in days gone by, 

 when the weather was allowed, like the sea, to do its work. I well 

 remember one blustering autumn day, when equinoctial gales Avere 

 blowing hard and strong, stemming the fierce "south-wester" all 

 along the rugged shore from Dover to this point, where with eyes 

 T-ed and half blinded with the cutting wind, seating myself on a block 

 of gault, and chopping with my hand-pick at what I thought were 

 bits of wood, until picking up a fragment in a Kttle mass of clay, I 

 found to my horror I had been innocently demolishing a nearly per- 

 fect crab. This incident to this hour fills me with regret for the 

 vandalism I so unconsciously perpetrated. I mention it, however, 

 not to perpetuate my misfortune, but to warn others to look closely 

 to their work if they wish to get good specimens of those four or 

 five species of cmstaceans which abound in this stratum. As they 

 are ordinarily sold by dealers, the carapace of the body and some 

 few segments of legs and claws are all that are ofiered to us ; but I am 

 satisfied that if care had been taken, very many of the now mutilated 

 specimens could have been extracted in a nearly perfect state, as 

 1Ik> limbs being long and tender, and generally shghtly separated 

 from the body, they are, I believe, from the rough way in which these 

 fossils are usually extracted, commonly left unnoticed in the matrix. 



Cnisluceans of large size and lobster-like form occasionally occur ; 

 niul one remarkably beautiful specimen, probably an Astacus, or of an 

 allied species, was obtained from tliis locality some few years since 

 by Mr. S. H. Beckles. 



As w(» proceed towards Baker's Gap, the Lower Greensand gTa- 

 tlually uprises; down this gully a miniature winter-torrent — the 

 (IramniLr of the impervious gault-lands behind — cascades over jutting 

 rocks amidst the long rank sedgy grass, and trickles — now^ lost, 

 now bubbling up— amongst the sea-Avorn pebbles of the narrow 

 hv'.\rh W\o\y. How ruinous the scene! Piles of huge half- 

 worn h.>ul<hM--rocks, undermined and fallen out from the stony strata 

 Hud uiterveninu- sandy beds of the Lower Greensand, which in a 



