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[Illustration]
BEACH RAMBLES
IN SEARCH OF
SEASIDE PEBBLES
AND
CRYSTALS.
WITH SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE ORIGIN OF THE
DIAMOND AND OTHER PRECIOUS STONES.
BY
J. G. FRANCIS.
LONDON:
ROUTLEDGE, WARNE, AND ROUTLEDGE,
FARRINGDON STREET;
AND 56, WALKER STREET, NEW YORK.
1859.
INTRODUCTION.
There is a pleasure to an intelligent mind in discovering the origin,
or tracing the past history, of any natural object as revealed in its
structure and growth. It is thus that the study of trees and plants,
ferns and field flowers, occupies and delights us. And a similar interest
would be found to attach to Seaside Pebbles, as one branch of mineralogy,
if we could once come to observe and understand them.
But while the marine shells of England have been all numbered and
classified, and even the seaweeds are emerging out of dim confusion into
the order of botanical arrangement, there is no popular work extant on
the subject of our pebbles.
Dr. Mantell, indeed, published an elegant little volume, entitled
“Thoughts on a Pebble;” but he therein treats of a single species, the
_Choanite_; whereas, we have other fossil creatures beside Choanites
preserved in the heart of siliceous pebbles; and our shores yield from
time to time varieties of agate and jasper, differing from the oriental,
and some of them of great beauty.
In the present treatise, an attempt has been made to commend this subject
to more general attention, by grouping together many scattered facts and
methodizing the results. Learned disquisitions and technical terms have
been as much as possible avoided; but in the concluding chapters, sundry
interesting points in natural philosophy bearing upon the subject are
handled rather more scientifically; and here, some original matter will
be found.
The coloured plates are after drawings by a well-known and ingenious
artist;[1] the original specimens being in my own collection. They have
been carefully and faithfully executed, and are on the same scale as the
pebbles themselves.
If this essay of mine should induce any one possessed of ampler leisure
and more adequate powers to enter more largely upon the merits of the
theme, I shall be indeed gratified.
J. G. FRANCIS.
_Isle of Wight, 1859._
[1] M. W. S. Coleman.
BEACH RAMBLES, ETC., ETC.
CHAPTER I.
ASPECT OF A BEACH, AND ITS PROBABLE ORIGIN.—TRUE NATURE OF THE
PEBBLES WHICH COMPOSE IT.
I know of few things more pleasant than to ramble for a mile along one
of our southern beaches in the early days of autumn. We get the sniff of
the sea-breeze; we see prismatic colours dappling the water, or curiously
reflected from capes of wet sand; solemn, beetling cliffs, broken here
and there by a green slope, rise on one side of us; while, on the other,
we are enchanted by the wild music of the waves, as they dash noisily
upon the shingle at our feet, and then trickle back with faint, lisping
murmurs into the azure gulf.
Alpine scenery is majestic, and river-lit landscapes are delicious; but
they seem as pictures of still life compared with the stir and resonance
of the shore and the ocean. The breeze which bends the standing corn
does not impart so much pleasure as that which dimples the bay at the
foot of our rustic garden; the thunder-cloud resting on a mountain is
not so impressive as that huge wall of inky blackness, which seems as if
it would choke the very light and air while it gathers on the horizon,
but will presently rend asunder and purify the overcharged atmosphere by
launching a tempest upon the face of the deep.
There are few persons who, after spending one or two consecutive summers
at Eastbourne, or in the Isle of Wight, can repress an ardent longing to
visit similar scenes from time to time.
The sea-side stroll has, however, been accused of monotony. But this
is either by really incompetent judges, or by inveterate sportsmen, to
whom the neighbourhood of the ocean suggests nothing more apposite than
a meet with harriers on the downs, or a raid upon puzzled rabbits in
some outlying warren, with the aid of a keeper, ferrets, and “varmint”
dogs. To such, even a brief sojourn on the simple-featured coast may,
undoubtedly, prove wearisome; but the fault rests with themselves. For,
all the while, others, who are better informed and more awake to what
lies around them, will be cheerfully occupied in kindred pursuits at the
foot of the cliff, or away on the beach, or far out, at low tide, among
the weedy rocks and sand. Here they hunt the cockle and the razor-shell,
collect bright algæ and marvellous zoophytes, or search for agates and
fossils among the endless heaps of shingle.
The delicate actiniæ and the rarer sea-weeds cannot be obtained in
winter; but the pebbles, which are intended to form the subject of this
little book, may always be met with; and the changes induced by rough
winds and surging tides, yield them in even greater abundance.
The pleasure of collecting pebbles has been greatly enhanced, to my
mind, by considering how it is that we come to have pebbly beaches at
all. Inevitable as these may appear to some people, they are quite a
phenomenon in their way, and to the full as deserving our attention as
the colony in a rabbit-warren.
Originally, the land alone possesses such materials; but it is the sea
which finds them out; and these two facts, put side by side, have
sometimes reminded me of the arbitrary allotment of the sexes in the old
mythology. _Oceanus_ being an enterprising gentleman. _Terra_ (always
feminine) is the quiescent lady, to whom he pays his court. She carries a
prodigious number of these treasures in her flinty bosom; but it is only
he, and his friends the rivers, who can get at them and draw them forth.
In our English Channel, Ocean is as fond of doing this, and of fringing
his waterline with a brown pebbly border, as other gentlemen are,
now-a-days, of wearing, if possible, a beard like that of the Sophi. Nor
is this surprising, when we remember that all creatures naturally desire
something which they have not got. For the bottom of the sea itself is no
beach at all, but chalk or sand, and sometimes hardened sandstone, with,
I dare say, many precipitous pits and hollows, and many pointed crags.
Here, gigantic fronds of the oar-weed wave to and fro among thousands of
acres of dulse and bladderwrack; while porpoises and dog-fish dive, and
limpets and mussels crawl, and arrowy lobsters shoot through the cerulean
gloom, and (if Mr. Tennyson may be believed) mermen and mermaids play at
hide-and-seek. Wonderful things there must be, if we could only spy them
out; but I do not think many pebbles. Whereas, our mother Earth teems
with these latter. There are jaspers in the conglomerate, and agates in
the mountain rocks, and veins of porphyry and serpentine in the trap
and basalt, and garnets and sapphires in the granite, and flint-nodules
in the chalk, and quartz-crystals almost everywhere. Probably these
exist, also, in many of the submarine strata; but unless a volcanic
eruption should occur, there is no force in operation there to dislodge
them. The bed of the ocean, and all depths of it below a hundred feet
perpendicular,[2] as _divers_ well know, remain calm and still, even when
a tempest is raging above. But on what we are pleased to call “terra
firma,” the case is reversed. Solid as the ground appears, all is subject
to elemental change and motion; and whenever the waves of the sea or the
strong current of a river can plough some crumbling chine, or wear away
the face of a cliff, down come the imbedded pebbles and crystals, and
gradually form a _beach_ upon the margin of the ocean. And this beach
is tossed up and down, and rolled to and fro, until most of the stones
composing it have become as smooth as hazel-nuts.
The above may be rather a rough sketch of the source of a beach; but I
believe it is correct in its leading features. In a subsequent chapter we
may better note certain peculiarities which are more than meet the eye.
But what are the pebbles themselves?
Most persons have occasionally handled specimens of the precious stones
or “gems;” but few of them, perhaps, are aware that our pebbles of
the road-side and sea-shore claim a common origin with these dazzling
crystals. Such is, however, the fact. Chemical analysis, availing itself
of the blow-pipe, the solvent acids, and the voltaic battery, has
succeeded in determining the base of every known gem. And the earths
which furnish such bases are chiefly two—ALUMINA, or clay, and SILICA, or
pure flint. From these, with an admixture of lime, and sometimes of iron,
in small quantities, all the native gems are derived, with the exception
of the diamond, whose base is CARBON.
Intensely hard as these substances are, and apparently not susceptible of
change if left to themselves, they have probably passed through great
chemical changes in the silent laboratory of Nature. For it is supposed
that our operations in analysis, if carefully conducted, merely bring
back their subjects, by a kind of _reversing_ process, to their several
primitive bases.
Now it is evident that the commoner pebbles are derived from these same
earths, of clay or flint, albeit in a debased condition. For there
is nothing else of which they could be made: neither do they exhibit
any properties foreign to those which such substances possess. Yet,
how vast is the difference between an oriental gem and the brightest
production of clay-pits or granite rocks. Not greater, however, than that
between Damascus steel and coarse pig-iron; or, between French lawn and
sail-cloth. And if Art can work such distinctions, why not Nature?
In fact, a perfect gem is a master-piece which chemistry and
crystallization have combined to elaborate, and which man has ransacked
the corners of the earth to obtain. The deep has been made to surrender
its treasures to the diver or the sunken net: the rock has been blasted,
and its inmost vein searched: the rushing river filtered, and its sand
sifted: and the contents of the jeweller’s caskets are the result. Here
may be seen diamonds from Golconda; and rubies from Samarcand and Pegu:
sapphires, emeralds, and amethysts from Persia, Arabia, and Armenia:
the topaz, blazing like fire, from the Indies or from the Ural: the
turquoise, with its delicious blue, from Arabia and Palestine: the opal
from Honduras: the blood-red garnet and amandine from Bohemia, Ceylon,
and Greenland: the jacinth and the chrysoprase, the chrysolite and beryl,
with pure pearls of globular form, all from the land of the rising sun,
while a deep brown jasper, rayed with stripes and rings as black as jet,
has travelled like a wandering palmer from sultry Egypt or the terrible
desert of Sinai.
To form and perfect the finer crystals, extremes of heat or cold appear
to be necessary: whereas our clime has perhaps always been temperate.
Beside this, it is probable that the mother-earth is not found pure with
us. There is a kind of white clay, called “kaolin,” obtained in one
particular quarry near Meissen in Saxony, and met with nowhere else. From
this clay the exquisite Dresden porcelain is baked, and this clay cannot
be exactly imitated. A near approach to it has been made by mixing good
potter’s clay with pounded chalcedony-flints; but still the _biscuit_
so produced is never equal to that from the “kaolin.” In like manner, we
may suppose that the peculiar earth which exists in sapphires no longer
occurs in our post-tertiary clay-beds.
Moreover, we know that there are many different clays occurring in our
geological strata. We have the clays of the Lower Tertiary; the clay of
the Wealden; and the Kimmeridge and Oxford clays, both of which belong to
the Oolite. Also in these main divisions, sundry mineralogical varieties
are comprised under a common name. But the great age of the granite
formation renders it certain that from none of these clays could those
sapphires have come (as to their _base_), which are born of the granite
rock. Indeed, our existing beds of clay are more or less mingled with
felspar, and felspar is one of the “silicates;” whereas the blue sapphire
is pure alumina free from all admixture of silica.
However this may be, the great fields for gems are in India and the
island of Ceylon, and in certain parts of the Russian dominions. No very
valuable stones have as yet been obtained from Australia; although the
vicinity of gold-mines has always been held to be prolific in at least
one kind: the “mother of ruby” being a roseate substance embedded in the
rock, and generally met with alongside of a vein of gold. The topazes are
not equal to those from Saxony.
As to our own sea-girt Isle, it is surely as guiltless of indigenous
gems, as of white elephants or birds of paradise. Had any such existed
with us, they must long ere this have been brought to light and appeared
in the market. We have bored the plain to two hundred fathoms’ depth: we
have pierced the hillside in tunnels which extend for miles: geologists
and antiquarians have delved and hammered and sifted: many curious
fossils have turned up, and a world’s wealth in minerals, but never
anything like a diamond or an oriental sapphire.
It is well that, to console us under such apparent poverty as to the
gems, we possess the treasure an hundred-fold in other shapes, though
derived from the same sources. Clay gives us no sapphires; but it floors
our ponds and canals, furnishes our earthenware, and yields the bricks
which have built the ribs of London. Carbon refuses to flash upon us in
the rays of an indigenous “brilliant,” but it feeds our furnaces, propels
our steamers and locomotives, and cheers a million of household hearths
under the well-known form of Coal. And Iron is our national sceptre:
it reddens here no jacinth or ruby; but it supplies us with spades and
ploughshares, lays down thousands of miles of railway, and has made
England the forge and workshop of the known world for giant engines and
massive machinery.
If our wealth be less dazzling than that from Golconda or Peru, it is, we
may hope, more durable; flowing to us through a healthier channel, by the
honest labour and steady perseverance of the sons of the soil.
* * * * *
This is somewhat of a digression from the subject of Sea-side pebbles.
But then, as was said, the magnificent crystals are their near kindred;
and in society the custom is to bring in any great connections we may
have, on the first fair opportunity: that once done, our _respectability_
is supposed to be established.
[2] On the banks of Newfoundland, and to the south of the Cape of Good
Hope, extraordinary exceptions occur to this rule; the sea being there
agitated to a vast depth, perhaps as much as five hundred feet. But this
is probably connected with the current of the great gulf-stream.