Two brothers, sea-faring men, were great friends of the lapidary and his wife. One day, one of these brothers found this pebble on the beach, and had it cut. It turned out, as I have said, a remarkably fine specimen. It was what they call a “deep-sea” pebble, and the “choanite” of a reddish hue lay exactly central in the bonze of white limestone. The sailors were both of them quite fond of it: and when they went to sea again, the handsome pebble went with them, and was laid “o’ nights” on a shelf by the hammock. Their boat was upset: one brother was drowned: the other righted the craft and got to shore, not without difficulty. Several articles were missing, having gone to the bottom; but the pebble was safe. The survivor brought it back to the lapidary, and made him accept of it, being unwilling to retain it himself. The lapidary took it, and put it aside: but his better half found it out, and insisted that he should neither sell it nor keep it. So, he _gave it away_. This stone I afterwards parted with to a London collector: not wishing to preserve so sad a reminiscence. I took a fossil in exchange, which I almost immediately lost. So, nothing connected with the mysterious choanite was “lucky.” Perhaps every feature in “Vectis,” from the matted festoons on its honey-combed rocks to the “witchery of its soft blue sky,” predisposes a frequent visitor to approve also of its pebbles. But it is an unprejudiced fact, that in texture and colour they excel those which are found on the Sussex beaches. And while I think highly of our Devonshire jaspers, I remember a jasper-agate, gathered some years ago at Sandown, which might challenge all such stones of native growth in our London museums, and bear away the palm. Many a calm summer’s evening, many a stormy winter’s forenoon, have I whiled away in absolute contentment on that most interesting shore. In the hot noons of July the bathing is delicious; and after your bath, the shadow cast by overhanging cliffs, and a fanning breeze from the sea, make a ramble onwards irresistible. But I found winter as pleasant in its way. When the gust roared, and chimneys smoked, and the heavens looked dark and disturbed, it was inspiriting to go forth roughly clad, and to watch the fitful changes where the weather-gleam strikes upon Culver; or to mark how that treacherous mist would come creeping round Dunnose, till the “white horses” rose on the sea, and the heavy squall which had long been packing in the offing burst with a wild cry, driving in a yet heavier element with tatters of oar-weed and splinters of broken dyke against the face of the immovable cliff.