show a perfect fish imbedded in what was once
soft clay. Scenting out valuable specimens in
this way, she enabled the savans to fix four
kinds of icthyosauri, besides two plesiosauri,
and the extraordinary pterodactyle (discovered
in 1828) which made Cuvier retract what he had
said of the lizard's cousin, and award the palm
of strangeness to a monster half vampire, half
woodcock, with crocodile's teeth along its
tapering bill, and scale armour over its lizard-
shaped body. If you have never seen the
creature delineated, take Dr. Buckland's wonderful
plate, Duria antiquior, wherein " the dragons of
the prime, which tare each other in the slime,"
are shown, swimming, flying, biting, fighting,
" as 'twas their nature to ;" and aloft in the
corner of the picture, those things that look like
Japanese kites, are nature's first attempts at
anything in the bird line. Grewsome beasts they
seem to be. Even if the pre-Adamite man is
ever proved to have been existing at that epoch,
we cannot imagine his wife making pets of them,
or his children liking to have them hung about
the house in cages, they have such a family likeness
to the evil spirits who beset Æneas or Satan
in an old illustrated Virgil or Paradise Lost.

One more discovery Miss Anning helped to
bring about: the ladies' fingers were at last
judged from their surroundings to be the bony
processes of pre-chaotic cuttle-fish,—belemnites
they are now named, because they are long and
dart-like, instead of flat like our present cuttle-
fish's inside. Some of them are so perfect that
the ink-bag has been found and "utilised."
Dr. Buckland, in his amusing Oxford lectures,
used to show drawings in sepia the colouring
matter used in making which was countless
thousands of years old. Of this lias itself, in
which all these creatures are discovered, we
must say a word: it is largely exported,
especially to Holland, for lias-lime has the
property of hardening under water, and so is
invaluable in forming the dykes, whereby, with
facings of immense blocks of Finland granite,
the Dutchmen try to keep the sea out of their
polders, or low-level meadows. Everybody
knows that our geological strata, of which we
can show a greater variety in this little island
than much larger countries possess, do not run
parallel with any of the coasts, but transversely
from north-east to south-west. The chalk goes
from Norfolk across to the Isle of Wight,
with the Wealden and London clay and other
beds laid upon it; the oolite from the North
Riding, down through Oxfordshire and
westward to Bath, and so on of the rest. Then
again the bands are not continuous and
unbroken. Often one bed is washed away
(denuded) along more than half its original course.
This is especially the case with the lias. It is
found at Lyme, it " crops out" again in a few
other places, but is not largely represented
anywhere else except in Leicestershire, where,
at Barrow-on-Soar, fish and reptiles identical
with those at Lyme might, till lately, have been
bought for a fifth of the price which the Duke
of Buckingham (who gave one hundred and
twenty pounds for a very indifferent icthyosaurus)
and other amateurs have made fashionable
at Lyme. Alas!  O intending speculator,
the Barrow men have now learnt how to charge.

But to return to Miss Anning. Dr. Carus, who
went with the King of Saxony through England
and Scotland, in 1844, and wrote an account of
his majesty's journey, speaks of visiting her
collection, and securing six feet of reptile for
fifteen pounds. The doctor says: "Wishing to
preserve the name of this devoted servant of
science, I made her write it in my pocket-book;
she said, with unaffected pride, as she gave me
back the book, ' My name is well known throughout
Europe.' " Better known indeed abroad
than at home! In her own neighbourhood,
Miss Anning was far from being a prophetess.
Those who had derided her when she began her
researches, now turned and laughed at her as an
uneducated assuming person, who had made one
good chance hit. Dr. Buckland and Professor
Owen and others knew her worth, and valued
her accordingly; but she met with little
sympathy in her own town, and the highest
tribute which that magniloquent guide-book, The
Beauties of Lyme Regis, can offer her, is to
assure us that " her death was, in a pecuniary
point, a great loss to the place, as her presence
attracted a large number of distinguished
visitors." Quick returns are the thing at Lyme.
We need not wonder that Miss Anning was
chiefly valued as a bait for tourists, when we find
that the museum is now entirely broken up, and
the specimens returned to those who had lent
them. No one had public spirit enough to take
charge of a non-paying concern, when the early
geological furore had calmed down, and people
came to bathe and not to chop rocks. You may
now visit the old abode of saurians without
being able to see a single tolerable specimen.

Miss Anning wrote sadly enough to a young
girl in London: " I beg your pardon for
distrusting your friendship. The world has used
me so unkindly, I fear it has made me
suspicious of every one."

All this time she was dying of a malignant
tumour in the breast—Her flying to strong
drinks and opium to ease the pain of this, her
detracting townspeople do not fail to record to
her discredit. She died in 1847, and the
Geological Society, in concert with the vicar of the
place, have lately put up a little memorial
window to her in the church—"a poor little
thing, sir; one of those kaleidoscope windows,
you know," said one of the " faint praisers,"
who, having neglected her in life, seem to
think it quite proper to decry all her belongings
now she is gone.

Grateful or ungrateful, the Lyme people live
in a pretty country. It is a fine bracing walk
over the hills from Bridport, itself a quaint
place—just a knot of houses by the beach, and
all the rest of the town a mile and more inland
—so inland, that you don't see the sea from any
part of it. Near Bridport ends the Chesil Bank,
that strange pebble beach which runs along
from Portland, joining the "island" to the