122 
TUE GEOLOGIST. 
render the investigations and comparisons complete. Being, too, 
vacation-time, the Professors v^-ere 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 tlie 
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 Erance 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 lioulogne 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 island that there protrudes through the sea- 
deposits of the Secondary rocks. I have often been surprised that 
