122 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



render the investigations and comparisons complete. Being, too, 

 vacation-time, the Professors were generally absent from the towns, 

 as were also most private families, and I thus lost much valuable as- 

 sistance. Moreover, the antiquities and picturesque scenery of the 

 Seine and the coast of Normandy proved so attractive, that my pencil 

 was more employed than my hammer, and my sketch-book much 

 fuller than my havresac. In truth, I idled by the way, and the work 

 I went for never has been done. Some of the incidents on that trip, 

 however, deserve a better fate than oblivion, and are worth the jot- 

 ting down. 



The period of my ramble was one of immense political importance to 

 all Europe — to the world, — of the deepest and most anxious moment 

 to the two countries, of whose profoundly remote geological history 

 I was patiently endeavouring to read a solitary passage, spelling the 

 words by petrified letters, and hoping to add another line to the 

 popular translation of that wonderful book, in the study of which so 

 many earnest and enthusiastic lives have been spent, and which to 

 have helped to have read is the dearly prized and true reward of the 

 scientific man's ambition. 



Upon the soil I trod our forefathers had fought and bled, and the 

 flower of the world's chivalry had met in sanguinary conflict on the 

 very spots where now to me the hand of friendship was sincerely 

 given, and as warmly returned. Every one's attention was turned 

 to the East, where England and France had sent the bravest of their 

 sons. Our Armada had sailed, and there was no one without some 

 relative, some friend in that vast fleet, far more powerful than that 

 which stands out so proudly emblazoned on the page of Spanish 

 history, but which the winds of heaven and a little gallant band of 

 Englishmen dispersed. 



The first distracting incident of my voyage was the landing of 

 Prince Albert at Boulogne ; the next the great review of 60,000 men 

 at Marquise. 



The district of Boulogne is one of great interest, not only as the 

 completing portion of the great circle of the elevation of the Wealden 

 districts of Kent and Sussex, but that it has been at a more remote 

 period the seat of convulsions which have brought the older rocks, even 

 the Silurians, to the surface ; and the fossils of all the beds from the 

 Chalk to the Primary Schists and Limestones, may be gathered in that 

 region of the little old islaud that there protrudes through the sea- 

 deposits of the Secondary rocks. I have often been surprised that 



