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.

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    exhibits the first indication of that flattened form which all fossil plants undergo by the slow decomposition of the vegetable fibre without entirely destroying the tex- ture of the wood. These trees, when uncovered by the sand and gravel which form the bed of the sea, are overspread with corallines, fuci, and sertularim, although these marine productions do not appear favoured in their growth on this vegetable matter. Some of the trees and portions of boughs having become stranded and separated from the peat-bed on which they grew, were at first mistaken for portions of some wreck; and this gave rise to the report so generally current during the gale, that some vessel had foundered on the coast. Another appearance of the wood above alluded to was the numerous perforations in it, which looked like the bolt-holes of ship timber. These perforations were the work of the pholadea; and the amateur had a good opportunity of enriching his collection with a fine series of the Pholas dactylus, from four to six inches in length. This shell is rather a stranger to this coast, and, though an inhabitant of both sides of the British Channel, has not been found in the living state on this shore. The absence of limestone rocks may in some measure account for this. The mode of burrowing into a stone, sometimes of considerable hardness, has employed the reasonings of naturalists for a long time. The lithodomi are W'ell known for their power in boring into stones, but why the pholadea above mentioned should prefer the peat timber is yet to be known; certain it is, that if Olivi and other zoologists were doubtful of the habit of Pholas dactylus as regards their perforating wood, the question may be set at rest by the examination of our gorban and forest timber; and as this shell is still