We therefore parted company, agreeing to
rendezvous at the Wellington for a late
dinner. My experience enabled me to warn
my geological friend to limit his under-cliff
coast rambles to the period of the receding of
the tide; for a too abstracted observer might
get into an awkward predicament, if he were
caught by the returning tide, and shut in
between the promontories of clay and mud
which extend into the sea at many parts of
this coast.

A geologist is apt to forget both tide and
time, and to become so absorbed in the
contemplation of the overlying strata when
exposed on a rare section, as to lose thought of
all mundane considerations whatever.

Hugh Strickland, the estimable fellow-
labourer with Murchison in divers good
geological works, crept down the steep bank
of a railway cutting, near the entry of a
tunnel, on the Great Northern. The gorge
had been too recently scooped out to have its
structure obliterated by the healing growth
of vegetation; but the rails were laid, and
the road was in operation. He stood on the
narrow path between the up and down lines,
sketch-book in hand, conning the steep
section with raised head, and jotting down
memoranda as suggested by the leaves, more
or less exposed, of the old world's book. He
saw a train advancing towards the tunnel,
and, as it neared with the warning whistle,
he stept back upon the opposite line; at that
moment another train emerged from the
tunnel, and hurled him into eternity. Poor
Strickland! He was well known to all our
little party, and deeply respected by us. We
were discussing the circumstances of his sad
fate as we started on our excursion.

At first we held on a common course,
leaving Sheerness by the new town, and
passing along the sea-wall towards the
Minster until we reached Scaps-gate, where
the cliffs begin to rise from the low-lands of
the western end of Sheppey. Some collectors
of the cement-stone or pyrites, which they
call copperas, dwell in cottages scattered
round this point. We called at each to
inquire for curiosities, and procured some
really good specimens at a moderate price.
To my share fell a few excellent fossil fruits
of the Nipa-like palms, a fine nautilus, with
its mother-of-pearl as lustrous as when the
animal guided its gorgeous shell over the
glancing waves beneath the hot rays of the
eocene sun. I got also a very good skull of
the large extinct samberoid (bonito-like) fish,
which M. Agassiz has called Cymbrium
macroponum, so termed from the great
expanse of the opercula, or gill-covers. The
bony cup, or outer coat of both eyes was well
preserved; those eyes are relatively larger,
as in all the existing swift-swimming
samberoids. The eye-ball in fishes is not round;
it is flattened in front, so as to form no
obstacle to swimming by projecting from the
level of the side of the head; and the osseous
texture of the sclerotic relates to the necessity
for greater strength in that tunic in an
eye which is not spherical in shape, and
which is subject to great external pressure
when the fish seeks the depths of the sea.
It was most interesting to contemplate, in
the petrified remains of a fish which swam
that old European ocean from which the Alps
had but just began to rise, the same evidence
of prospective contrivance, or the same
exemplification of the conditions relating to the
laws of the refraction of light and the density
of the aqueous medium, as may be studied by
the comparative anatomist in the fishes of
the present day.

Having made our purchases at Scaps-gate,
we left the geologist to scramble along the
shingle at the base of the cliffs, whilst we
diverged towards Minster Church, passing
which, we proceeded on the road towards
Warden. About three-quarters of a mile
beyond the church there is a lane on the left
hand leading towards the Royal Oak. In
this lane, and scattered between it and
Hensbrook, are some cottages of cement-gatherers
and others who work upon the beach. Knock
at the door of every hovel: there is no
knowing what treasure the good man may
not have brought home and left with the
wife, on the chance of a call from a peripatetic
collector of curiosities. On the present occasion,
at the dwelling of a family named
Crockford, I had the good fortune to meet
with a large chelonite, somewhat cumbrous,
it is true, but which, having slung it, with a
little contrivance and help from the good
dame, over my shoulders, I bore along bravely
and safely through the day's ramble, and,
ultimately, to mine inn. It is now the prime
ornament of my tertiary cabinet, and is
allowed to be the finest example of an eocene
terrapene, or fresh-water tortoise, that has
yet been got. The true turtles are much
more common at Sheppey. My fossil terrapene
equals the largest known living species,
and exceeds by more than four times the
solitary species of Emys that still lingers on
the European continent. It will be the
subject of two beautiful plates in the forthcoming
number of Owen's History of British Fossil
Reptiles, and has gladdened the eyes of the
Professor by a more exact demonstration of
all the complex sutures of carapace and plastron,
and by more perfect impressions of all
the tortoise-shell plates that of old covered
the now petrified bony box of the slow-treading
reptile than the anatomist had
previously witnessed in any fossil tortoise or
turtle.

From the Crockfords and other dwellers of
the cottages in and near the lane, we next
trudged on to Hensbrook. Here we made
inquiry for a man named Pead, whom I had
previously known as an industrious collector,
and we found amongst his stores, besides
many fair ordinary specimens of the Sheppey
fossils, two good portions of the vertebral