On the whole, summer is the most fruitful season for stocking a cabinet, on account of the more powerful illumination cast upon the objects of your search. But in winter the beach itself is very likely to be in better condition, for it is oftener agitated, and many specimens will come to the surface which in calmer weather lie buried under sand. It is important to train yourself to attentive observation, and after long habit the ear will listen intuitively. If you hear the sea make a dull, booming noise during the night, be on the look-out two or three tides later, when the first shingle now thrown up has sifted and settled down. Large pebbles will then be found on the top of all, the process being much like that which takes place on shaking a basin of lump sugar. But it will be well for you to be always on the alert. The seaside elements must be coaxed and humoured, if you hope to get anything by their agency. A beach itself is exceedingly capricious. On some days you may walk for miles and remark nothing worth picking up; perhaps the next day, over the same ground, so great will be the profusion of fossils as to suggest the idea that since your last visit a petrified shoal had returned to life, swum into the bay, and there been once more stifled in gurgling lime, or liquid silex, and penetrated by the metallic “moss.” “The sea yields its harvests without sowing or planting,” and seaside scenery is exquisite if you have come upon it where it is unsophisticated. Happily it is in such sequestered “Edens of the _western_ wave” that the most desirable pebbles are met with. I have gathered rare specimens where the dor-hawk was wheeling overhead, and saucy sea-gulls screeching almost in my face; while a cunning crow would watch from a projecting ledge of rock to see whether I was about to capture, and afterwards throw away, anything which might serve him for a luncheon. The terraces of Margate and Ramsgate are invaluable to the tired artizans of London seeking their well-earned recreation; but no poet could venture to affirm of them what Scott said of “Brignall banks,” that they are “wild and fair.” But quit these populous thoroughfares, and get away to pearly Beachey Head, or roam the lone strands of Yorkshire or Devon, or go and lose yourself among shadowy nooks and gleaming bays in the sweetest of all islands, and you will possess the genuine colour and scent, and music and mystery of the sea, as the Creator has framed and blended that wondrous element. You need not look for pebbles unless you like; sometimes it were better not. But saunter down to the water’s crinkled edge, and inhale that indescribable odour from old rock, slippery now with dulse and ribbon-weed—Piesse and Lubin distil nothing to equal it—and con the page in Nature’s volume which lies open before you; it will never give you a head-ache, nor a heart-ache either.