io6 Malton Museum and Other Geological Collections. 
carried out by a very different process from what it is to-day. Then, 
every quarryman saw practically every piece of rock which he dislodged 
by his pick or crowbar, and if he missed any fossil therein it was probably 
noticed by the person who placed it in the cart, or broke it up for road 
metal or lime burning. Each particular fossil had a definite price 
according to its rarity or condition, and the quarrymen made quite a 
substantial supplement to their incomes in their zeal for preserving good 
specimens. In this way the shelves in the Malton Museum, for which 
Chadwick acted as curator, became loaded with examples from am- 
monites, three feet or more in diameter, to fish teeth almost microscopic 
in size. 
Speaking of the large ammonites reminds us that there was strong 
competition between Mortimer and Chadwick as to which could get the 
largest chalk Ammonite, and each one accused the other of adding a 
certain amount of plaster of paris at the end of the specimen to make it 
a few inches larger than that of the competitor, and from subsequent 
examination it appears that both of them were right ! 
The chalk collections formed by Chadwick, Mortimer and others can 
never be replaced as they were obtained from quarries which do not now 
exist. It will be remembered that years ago, the East Yorkshire roads 
were largely made of chalk or Oolite, and this was obtained from quarries 
in the fields on the road sides, usually placed half a mile apart ; thus each 
one supplied the road for a quarter of a mile on either side. In this way, 
the hundreds of sections enabled collecting to be carried on in parts of 
the chalk where there are no sections now, and consequently the specimens 
can no longer be obtained. 
The Malton collection was used by the Geological Survey, by the 
late W. H. Hudleston, who wrote many valuable monographs on the 
Mollusca of the Oolitic Rocks ; Sir Archibald Geikie, Professor Watts, 
and, in fact, most authors of standard textbooks on geology had to refer 
to the wonderfully prepared specimens in the Malton collection. Chad- 
wick spared no pains and gave considerable time in extracting each 
specimen from its matrix. He also adopted a very useful method of 
leaving a certain quantity of the actual rock around the objects, and the 
back of this was sawn through and then polished flat so as easily to rest 
on the shelves. Upon this flat portion, in indelible ink, he gave the 
name of the specimen, the actual quarry and locality in which it was 
found, and the date. This makes the series extraordinarily valuable 
from a geological point of view as so many collections of this sort exist 
without the necessary data to enable the student to take full advantage 
of the information an object may give. On this point, one well 
remembers a prominent official of the British Museum when collecting 
with a party in East Yorkshire, immediately he found a specimen he 
either wrote upon it or placed a label upon it giving the information as 
to locality, etc., and his advice to his students was ‘ The first thing you 
do is to stick a d label on the d specimen,’ and there is no doubt 
that the adjectives used assisted in impressing the very desirable informa- 
tion upon those present. 
While it is difficult to single out any particular object in the Malton 
collection, special stress should be made upon the wealth of material 
relating to the Oolitic reptile and fish fauna. The ammonites are also 
particularly well preserved and an exceptionally large example of Am- 
monite perarmatum (?) has long been known, as it has the aptychus, 
Phillips, Trigonellites antiquatus still in position. 
The present writer, so long as forty years ago, frequently gave ad- 
dresses to the people of Malton in the Museum lecture hall when there 
was a prominent and influential local history society, among whom 
was the late M. B. Slater, one of the greatest authorities on the Mosses. 
Times, however, have changed ; the Museum became closed, and for quite 
a large number of years its treasures have been packed away. Recently, 
The Naturalist 
