cloud as we wailed tlie I'ccediiig waves, into which my impatience impelled me more liian once—could I
look through those foaming waters—I tried to look through them.
■' Do ye see that tuff o’ sea-weed just tipping up there yer honor; he’s there about."
“ There, there, don’t yc see the weed sir in tiie hollow o’ tliem there waves.”
Jonas, who thus addressed me, in liis anxiety to point me out the spot had advanced shoe deep—in
a moment the returning brine drenches liim to the knees.
Those algm, which had so long flourished unconsciously by the grave of ttie wondrous creature we
were watching, float upon their cliainless element a few moments and are then left as if to rest themselves
upon tho sand,
Tho surges fail from the sloping shore—tiiey arc fainter—fainter—Wishcombe rushes amongst tiie
shallows, laves them wilii a furze-bush provided for tlie occasion—“ Hero, here yer honor”—the object of
my Egyptiaii-like idolatry, the adored lizard is at my feet.
Let every naturalist make pilgrimage to the beetling craggs mid-way of the rivers Char and Lim.
A waterfall issuing from a placid lake in tlicir lone bosom bounds from ledge to stony ledge and is
swallowed up of tbc thirsty shingle at their base;—in a right line witli that glittering cascade—at the
brink of tlic ocean when farthest ebbed—a group of five or six sandstone rocks repose upon a bed of lias
shale; there, by those rocks ciad with russet alg£e, lay the Chiropolyostinus the mark of the vertebral
column of whicli was scarcely perceptible through the selenitic layer that had preserved it from the
roaring waters they come they come,—from ebb to flow of the tide less time elapses than you have
consumed reader in scanning this paragraph.
Jonas gladly sells me tlie right to the skeleton, of which I liave heard he had known many months,
while no opportunity presented him for its extrication. Ho chuckled when I gave him a guinea earnest-
money, convinced that he had made brave of a discovery that no one could render useful—that his
ill-fortuno must be mine too.
“ Yor honor, sir, 'ill be liere to-morrow at low-tidc.” “ Aye, and Jonas—bring as many men and tools
to help as you think proper.”
IV. “ You will never gel that animal.” said Miss Anning, as wc made our devious way towards
Lymo through the mist and flashing spray, “ or if you do, per-chance, it cannot be saved.”
My eyes glare upon the intellectual countenance before me,—the words of those lips were I knew
oracular as tliose of a Pythoness and my heart fainted within me.
She saw my change of blood and stopped—“ because the marl, full of pyrites, falls to pieces as soon
as dry.”
1 revive—“ that I can prevent.”
" Can you.”
V. I lay upon a thorny pillow listening tlie livelong niglit to the rumbling gale,'—or if slumber came
over my weary eye-lids sad and frightful visions disturb me;—but the day breaks and—the wind's tlic
wrong way, south-west.
The best street of Lyme-Regis is disfigured—but all the world knows this—by an ugly market-place,
which has an ugly tower surmounted by an ugly fish to tell the way of the wind- To this most ungainly
place and puppet of a tower were my eyes directed with the first sim-beam and to the weatlier-cock my
orisons wend thrice seven days—in vain;—tliere it stuck with its mouth agape as if to bugbear the violent
wind and storm which blew all the time from the south and west.
Everyday, for three weeks, I sought witli a kind of forlorn hope the lofty cliffs—the sandstone rocks.
The once silvery water-fall, swoln by the incessant rain, dashes from on high and its turbid stream
bespockles all around it with filthy mud.
The white sea-gull swims over the deeply submerged weed and the black lobster and perverse
crab have their haunt tiicre by the tiling of ten thousand ages.
The angry waters of the channel are pent up by contrary winds and the relic of an incalculably
remote generation sleeps on in his oozy bed secure beneath the main.
VI. One day I arose in such impcrturbabie mood as disappointment like this may be supposed to
occasion and gaped to see the brazen fisli turn tail as mucli as he himself did at the hollow tempest that
flitted by from tiie rugged north. The weather had veered to tlie right quarter at last and if it continued
a few hours I might accomplish my long deferred hope;—all my friends congratulate me.
“ Make haste; the tides going out fast" said Miss Anning as I passed her on the way to the
Chiropolyostinus. 1 seize this opportunity of thanking her for the brief exhortation; it secured me tlie
saurus that same day. Really the tide seemed to gallop away !
Half a dozen of us—all lusty and eager for tlic occasion—meet; we arrange the mode of
exhumation, dispose our instruments and wait the crisis wlien the retreating waves shall desert the
remain.
It arrives. “ Let no one invade this”—
a square marked around the skeleton in the marl, s : feet
and a lialfby three feet and a half.
“ What d'ye think zir to dig 'un out a whool,” cxclaincd tlic Atlacan Blue—the hest tempered but
unliappily Bacclianal fellow that ever lived.
“ Yes.”
The tide goes back------------ back------------- back------------- our squai'c is cut ten inches thick; T
lessen its length and breadtli a foot; “ the crow-bars and pick-axes lo loosen it from its bed:—now my
boys now ^now; does it come in one piece?” “ Eas,”
Tlie spcctatoi-s say the tide flows—it does; we attempt to raise the lieaiy mass upon its side but—
our stiengtli fail us, ’tis more than we can accomplish.
. To Sir Henry Baker, the reverend Benjamin Jeanes, Mr. Edwards, Waugh and other gentlemen,
who came to our help and by whose additional exertions we at length ciTected it, my thanks have bcCn
already made. I thank them again; their condescension can never be sufficiently estimated.
The tide flows fast.—We try to lift it into tlie vehicle prepared for its transport from the reach of
danger—wc cannot. “ You must break’un in half sir.” “ No.” The waters approach us—they make
a broach in the rude bank cast up by us against them—another, and another—another, they arc at our
heels; “ one more trial my boys, your own rcwaixl if successful—yc-o;”—tlie saurus is safe.
VII. Let me ponder awhile—solace myself with tlie uncraseablo memory of that one sliort lioui-.
VIII. Ere the' sun arose on the third of September I proceed to unpack the Ciiii'opolyostinus.
The saw-dust removed, I consider of the mode of developing it—as irregular laycre of selenite interpose
between the laniinm of tlio marl and are of such stubborn texture that tliey threaten the disruption
with them of the bones themselves. But asccrlaining their perpendicular fracture 1 succeed in removing
them without injuiy to tlie skeleton by a decisive yet careful blow of tlie m a lle tth o s e formidable cones
of selenite fly one after the other, leaving the Chiropolyostinus unscathed by the terrible ordeal.
A happy accident conduced to this most happy result—the decomposed animal matter of the creature
somewliat neutralized the process of mineralization in the instant vicinity of tlie iwne—it preserved it
from the touch of tiie sulptiite. No art could detacli lione and selenite in close relation.
And here I must again note the assistance that I derived from the warm-weather that closed the
remarkable summer and autumn of 33. For with all ray pains, some of the tliin apophyses of the tail
yielded to the force necessary for their extrication from the dense matrix—the sun hardens the gum
wliicii secures them in their original order.
IX. When that beautifu! thing of which our beautiful plate is but a faint type, came forth at the
magic touch of my chisel such a feeling possessed me as few realize. All my other specimens, the Iiuge
Chiroligostinus, the beautiful Chiroparamekostinus were unique so that oryctologists looked at them but
to despair,—but this—the Cliiropolyostinus—that I had sought for with a miser mind for five years, lay
like a new creation before me—and I was the creator. I worshipped it for liours in my mad intoxication
of spirit.
X. As Miss Aiming anticipated, the marl—as soon as it dried—cracked, but by the assistance of
some clever carpenters we secured it in a tight case witli plaster of Paris so Itiat no power can now
disturb it.
THE HEAD.
The head of llie Cliiropolyostinus is shorter comparatively than that of tlic Chiroligostinus and the
bones whicli compose it are generally tliiclrer, stronger and better compacted together. In the specimen,
plate eight—a splendid bead discovered at Street—the synartlirodial union of tlie anterior third of the
inferior jaw is well sliown; the perfect conjunction of the several sutures, the condition of the teeth and
the solidity of the bones prove that it belongwl to an Ichthyosaurus that ilicd in its prime.
Plale nine, descriptive of a slab from the village of Nembnett near Bristol, and the eleventii plate
show the thick, clumsy tcctli.