unnaturally jumped to the conclusion that the one was the cause of the other, that the ripple on the surface of the water had somehow imprinted its form on the sand at the bottom. Now, really, one is not the _cause_ of the other, but they are both caused by the same action, and each is as much a ripple as the other. The wave-like form in the sand is not a ripple _mark_, but a ripple; if it is the mark of anything, it is a ‘current mark,’ and as such I have always preferred to speak of it. Just as a current in the air produces a ripple in the surface of the water below it, so a current in the water produces a ripple in the sand below it. It makes no difference, indeed, whether the sand be acted upon by air or water. Wherever the circumstances are favourable, wind will cause a ripple or current mark on the surface of blown sand, as I observed frequently under very favourable circumstances at Sandy Cape, in Australia, and as has been observed by Sir Charles Lyell, near Calais. In each case the moving fluid propels the grains of sand forward, piling them up into ridges, which are perpetually advancing by the rolling of particles over the crest of each ridge into the hollow beyond, where they are for a time sheltered from the current, but soon buried under the advancing ridge, to be again turned up and rolled onward, perhaps, as their site becomes exposed to the force of the stream.”[94] Other fossil remains found in the Oolite demand our notice before we leave this period of the earth’s history, or this portion of the earth’s crust. In the autumn of last year we were _en route_ to Cornwall, but turned aside to visit, among other matters, the Oolite in the neighbourhood of Bath, Chippenham, Bradford, and Trowbridge. Leaving the trunk line of the Great Western, we transferred ourselves at Chippenham to the branch that would take us to Trowbridge, that little Halifax or Preston of the West of England. Many a long day had passed since we made our first acquaintance with the poet Crabbe, and, though fossil hunting, we felt we must pay a pilgrimage to his honoured shrine. We looked at the old church in which for eighteen years he was the representative and expounder of a large and human creed first uttered by the Great Teacher from Galilee; and standing by Chantrey’s monument of Crabbe, we thought how dear to God the man must be, who by dint of purpose, purity, and hope, had risen from an unknown boy to command the ear of the public in a time of poetic dearth, and who, amidst a very chequered life, had realized the fine idea of Goldsmith: “As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on its head.”