122 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
their two prominent muscle-mai-ks, strew the cindery-looking 
ground ; while here and there, like lioi'ny flakes, are the thin angular 
shell-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 were 
blowing hard and strong, stemming the fierce " south-wester" all 
along the rugged shore from Dover to this point, where with eyes 
red 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 little mass of clay, I 
found to my horror I had been innocently demohshing 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 crustaceans 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 offered 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 
the limbs being long and tender, and generally slightly 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. 
Crustaceans of large size and lobster-like form occasionally occur ; 
and one remarkably beautiful specimen, probably an Astacus, or of an 
allied species, was obtained from this locality some few years since 
by Mr. S. H. Beckles. 
As we proceed towards Baker's Gap, the Lower Greensand gra- 
dually uprises ; down this gully a miniature winter-toiTent — the 
draining 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-worn pebbles of the narrow 
beach below. How ruinous the scene ! Piles of huge half- 
worn boulder-rocks, undermined and fallen out from the stony strata 
and intervening sandy beds of the Lower Greensand, which in a 
