Come in, Sirs, you may venture;
For here is entertainment good
For Churchman or Dissenter.
[Illustration: MISS MARY ANNING.]
We thought we had finished with fossils after leaving Stromness in the
Orkney Islands and trying to read the names of those deposited in the
museum there, but we had now reached another "paradise for geologists,"
this time described as a "perfect" one; we concluded, therefore, that
what the Pomona district in the Orkneys could not supply, or what Hugh
Miller could not find there, was sure to be found here, as we read that
"where the river Char filtered into the sea the remains of Elephants and
Rhinoceros had been found." But we could not fancy ourselves searching
"the surrounding hills for ammonites and belemnites," although we were
assured that they were numerous, nor looking along the cliffs for such
things as "the remains of ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus, and other
gigantic saurians, which had been discovered there, as well as
pterodactyles," for my brother declared he did not want to carry any
more stones, his adventure in Derbyshire with them being still fresh on
his mind. We therefore decided to leave these to more learned people,
who knew when they had found them; but, like Hugh Miller with his
famous Asterolepis, a young lady named Mary Anning, who was described as
"the famous girl geologist," had, in 1811, made a great discovery here
of a splendid ichthyosaurus, which was afterwards acquired for the
nation and deposited in the British Museum.
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