Rambles among the Channel Islands / by a Naturalist.

Date:
[1855?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Rambles among the Channel Islands / by a Naturalist. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    179/402 (page 167)
    by the meadow-plants which ornamented their grassy habitation; roots of rushes and weeds, suri'ounded by those of grasses and mosses, gave evidence of the luxuriance of the locality. The very perfect state in which the trees were found shows that they had been for a long time buried under sand. The compression of their trunks and boughs exhibits the first indi- cation of that flattening of the form which plants undergo under such circumstances. The trees, when uncovered by the sand and gravel which form the bed of the sea, were covered with corallines, fuci, and sertulariEe. Some of the trees and portions of the boughs having been separated by the fury of the gale from the peat-bed in which they had been contained, were driven to land, and gave rise to the idea that some wreck had taken place upon this for- midable part of the coast. Some of the wood was so perforated by the pholades, that it resembled timber used for naval architecture, the holes being like those for the passage of the ropes of a ship. The Pholas dactylus was the creature which had drilled those perforations into the wood, and I saw specimens taken from it five or even six inches in length.” In addition to the Pholas dactylus two other varieties of these shells were found, Pholas Can- dida and Pholas farm, imbedded in the peat.