A step further, and what is that handsome stone? It is a block of Devonian jasper: scarcely so hard as the Egyptian, but more attractive, owing to the richness of its hues. It is striated with veins of agate, and here and there “shot” with a dark metallic “moss” of the colour of bloodstone. As a set off to this, the lapidary has arranged with true taste some quaint pieces of conglomerate, in which the nodules of chalcedony or crystals of quartz have taken a high polish, and are agreeably relieved by streaks of red jasper and blotches of yellow limestone. Another part of the board exhibits a score of the well-known “echini,” which children call “sea-eggs.” These embrace two varieties, “spatangus” and “cor anguinum;” or, in the vernacular dialect, “fairy-loaves” and “fairy-hearts.” A third form of the Spatangus kind, but with a pointed cusp, is called “Galerites albogalerus.” A few are chalcedonized: in others, a bright spar has filled up the interior of the hollow conical shell. [Illustration: ANANCHYTES OVATUS. FAIRY LOAF. COR ANGUINUM. FAIRY HEART. GALERITES ALBOGALERUS. A FAIRY LOAF. AMMONITE.] A small open tray of twisted card contains several bits of carnelian, and a true bloodstone from the Yorkshire coast: while on a strip of canvas as a _lit de repos_, lie a cray-fish and some belemnites from the Gault formation of the Wight, hemmed round by lustrous sharks’ teeth: the latter now hardened into stone, and proclaiming by their isolated condition that the jaws in which they once grew were cartilaginous, and have therefore perished. Thus the store of the lapidary comprises two main divisions, stones _organic_ and _inorganic_, of the past history of the latter we know little; and can only judge by surmise, upon approved geological principles. In the former, there occur plain indications that we are not handling either an accidental “lusus” or an embryo; but that the structure here perpetuated was once endowed with life, and belonged to a creature having its assigned place in the scale of animated being. Let any one fill a drawer with such specimens gathered by himself: and, omitting the question of mere marketable value, what jeweller’s counter can compare with it for real interest? The oriental gems, though they gleam as if “all air and fire,” are but dead crystals, and have never stood higher than they stand now: whereas these pretty fossils from our wave-beaten coast tell each a wondrous tale, and form a kind of tangible link between the zoophyte of to-day and his far-removed ancestry in the earliest seas which washed the surface of our globe. [Illustration: A CRAY-FISH, FROM THE GAULT. A SHARK’S TOOTH.] But let us now look into the back-parlour, where all the cutting and polishing takes place. A peep behind the scenes is generally instructive. The first time I ever entered such a “sanctum,” I remained there nearly an hour; _asking questions_, you may be sure.