At the foot of Shanklin Chine occurs a singular collection of limestone pebbles, siliceous within, which are well worth examining. Extraordinarily-tinted choanites are here sometimes detected in the heart of most unattractive and mis-shapen blocks. I once asked a successful beaching lapidary there, how he _knew_ them? He declared that he did not know them at all; but that whenever he saw fresh bonzes thrown up, especially if with a deep-sea mark upon them, he would break them all, and generally obtained a superb specimen among them. The objection to this murderous process was, as he confessed, that some of the finest were wont to be destroyed. Latterly, I thought I discovered a way to recognize the presence of any such choanite. It is to look closely for a peculiar depression in the stone which is connected with the principal _air-hole_ belonging to the fossil. But this method demands time and care. Onwards to Luccombe, the beach disappears, owing, I imagine, to immovable depth of sand. At Luccombe Chine, it partially revives: but do not linger here. Go on to Bonchurch, and as you approach that lovely hillside, rouse all your energies. Here comes in a mile of sand, small shingle, and half-buried pebbles, which will put your skill to the test, if skill you have. Look out for symptoms of the “tubular” structure, and diverge now and then to the pools among those weedy rocks. Many a beautiful “actinia” in flint lies there snug enough, wedged in a dark cranny, and coated over with glutinous moss. You must really not be idle now. Do not even light a cigar, but hammer and delve and scrape away; only do not give in until you lay hold of something worth the while. Two zoophytes, of the agatine-siliceous kind, were picked up on this spot about a twelvemonth since, for which large sums of money were offered in Ventnor the same day. For one of this sort, an American gentleman, not long ago, gave eight pounds sterling. But there is in Brighton, or was till very recently, a pebble from the Rottingdean beach, for which fifty guineas have been offered to its possessor, and refused. I have not seen it myself, but I am told that it is a spotted pyriform choanite; the material, very beautiful agate. At Ventnor, red gravel and diminutive carnelians, some of them not bigger than pins’ heads, await the pebble-seeker. Occasionally an agate is found here which is “chatoyant,” like an opal, but this is scarce. I once tried the Freshwater strand, “ultima thule,” but I only met with doubtful, ragged flints. The north side of the island presents on its shores a surface chiefly of mud and estuary drift, delightful to solans and sea-gulls, but not profitable for the cabinet of the mineralogist.