Peephole

“ Wherever a pebble occurs along the surface of this sand, it has invariably a hollow before it on the side facing the direction whence the stream is flowing, and a long tail of sand pointing down the channel. If we watch the motion of the water along its bed, the denuding agency may be seen actively at work. Every pebble that protrudes above the shallow streamlet arrests the course of the current, which is then diverted in three directions. ”

“ It seems odd here—as indeed it does on any beach—to find that an inversion of what we should naturally consider to be the order in sizes of the shingle from low-water line upwards takes place. The biggest pebbles are always highest up, lining the high-water mark. Now, having already shown that the pebbles are brought to shore by the action of the water, the inference seems clear that this element would be so far like most other bearers of burdens that it would take the first opportunity of dropping the heaviest portion of its load. ”

“ Here, a couple of hours may be taken to as many miles; and if you do not shut your eyes, you must fill your pockets. But look with resolution for good ones.
From Sandown to Shanklin, in the opposite direction, it is scarcely inferior. It was once even better; but, lying so near at hand, it has been unceasingly hunted over; and to look for a fine pebble there now, is almost like hoping to find a hare sitting in your kitchen-garden. ”

“ Now here, just as on the beach, the collisions of rock-fragments are attended by mutual abrasion, sand and clay are formed, and the fragments become smaller and rounder. Our series of pebbles from the beach might be matched perfectly among the river-gravel. In mountain streams especially we may often observe that pebbles of a particular kind of rock become more numerous, larger, and more angular as we proceed up stream, until we reach the solid ledge from which they were derived, showing the same gradation as the beach pebbles when followed back to the parent cliff. ”

“ If this great bed of pebbles, without including the mud necessarily derived from their attrition, was piled into a mound, it would form a great mountain chain! When we consider that all these pebbles, countless as the grains of sand in the desert, have been derived from the slow falling of masses of rock on the old coast-lines and banks of rivers, and that these fragments have been dashed into smaller pieces, and that each of them has since been slowly rolled, rounded, and far transported, the mind is stupefied in thinking over the long, absolutely necessary, lapse of years. ”

“ We account for the paradox thus: when an advancing wave throws down upon the shore its load of pebbles and retires, it is evident that the discharged freight will lie more or less closely packed just in proportion to the size of the stones which compose it; that sand or gravel, for example, will form a comparatively flat floor over which the following wave will roll the larger pebbles, until the smallest among these have packed into one another with sufficient approach to a level surface to permit the water to pass over them without any great tendency to move them further forwards. ”

“ It is absolutely necessary to understand pebbles in the rough.
[49]
The more peculiar a beach is in its contents, the less will it exhibit to catch the eyes of one who has never learnt to appreciate them. Coloured seaweeds are enticingly bright; pearly shells are as evident as trinkets; but the external coat of a genuine pebble differs widely from its internal structure, and may yield to the uninitiated no indication whatever of the value of the latter. A crust of hardened lime or sandstone is a frequent envelope of the best specimens in one kind of zoophyte. ”

“ Every day, in summer, many ladies and children go down to this beach pebble-hunting, carrying their lunch-baskets with them. They lie down at full length upon their faces on the drifts of polished pebbles, and with a stick dig down into the mass in search of special beauties. A quart of fine ones is a good day's work, and a lady of unusually fastidious taste will frequently work all day for a cupfull. Collections of these pebbles may be seen in most of the better class of houses in San Francisco, and along the coast, though they cannot be considered as of any great value. ”

“ The things which every one should reject without hesitation are those whose character is evident, and with it their little worth.
Mediocrity in pebbles is insufferable. Do not assume that the wet portion of a beach necessarily yields the best chances. Many pebble-hunters never get over this early delusion. On a coast which is rarely trodden, the upper range contains the richest store. And in every case, the [52] tide runs twice in the twenty-four hours over banks which now look dry and dusty, as well as over that narrow strip which you see glistening with saline moisture. ”

“ Amid countless boulders of flint, and heaps of hardened gravel, we have upon a good beach certain smooth, translucent pebbles, and we have fossil petrifactions [33] enveloped in an opaque crust, and we have the variegated jaspers and moss-agates.
Our semi-pellucid stones were, with the exception of an occasional bit of “bloodstone,” the only pebbles of native growth known in Britain half a century ago. They consist of two or three varieties of agate, two of carnelian, and one of the crystal called an aquamarine. ”

“ Now just notice how a little knowledge of nature's methods as a landscape artist makes the most commonplace scenery interesting. All streams as they go dry have a tendency to spread out arms like that; sometimes two, sometimes four or more, but always in twos or multiples of two. The reason is that as the water evaporates the stream becomes weaker and so is obliged to drop a part of its load. The heaviest part of the load—the most pebbles, sand, and soil—is carried in the middle of the stream, owing to the current being stronger, relieved as it is from the friction of the banks. ”

“ Rymer Jones’s animal; and in the very vicinity where I found my fossil in question, I have since obtained, in a flint pebble from the cliff, a beautifully petrified “Pecten” (same species of shell) in agate.
I might multiply remarks and instances such as these; but it is not needed. Every one will form their own opinion, in collecting fossil pebbles, as to what the originals were; but I think they will generally agree with me, that while our living individuals differ in many points, still we have mostly types of the same species actually existing in our present seas. ”

“ When a group of pebbles have been long exposed to attrition by the waters of a powerful stream, especially where the current is intermittent, and where a large quantity of sand has been worked or blown into the stream by freshet or wind storm, they may become rounded by the erosive action of the water or by the abrasive power of the sand, as well as by the attrition consequent upon their sharp contact with one another. ”

“ Pepys was such a bubble of mirth, such a book of shrewd sense, such a register of anecdotes, that his loquacity and his infinite good-fellowship made even romance linger in its onrush for an hour.
Late shadows were floating down the river before John Gore escaped from the secretary’s weak eyes and stalwart tongue. He had some small affairs of his own to attend to in the City and at the New Exchange in the Strand: some new harness at a saddler’s; stockings and shirts at a silk mercer’s; a case of long pistols at a gunsmith’s in a street near the New Exchange. ”

“ If the pebbles are of rock of medium toughness, the smaller pebbles might be crushed under the heavier loads. It is the usual practice to permit gravel to be used for the foundation course in which the pebbles are as large as will pass a 31⁄2-inch circular screen opening, and for the wearing course, as large as will pass a 21⁄2-inch circular screen opening. If larger pebbles are allowed in the wearing course, the surface is certain to become rough after a time. ”

“ Anon I went to make water, not dreaming of any thing but my testicle that by some accident I might have bruised as I used to do, but in pissing there come from me two stones, I could feel them, and caused my water to be looked into; but without any pain to me in going out, which makes me think that it was not a fit of the stone at all; for my pain was asswaged upon my lying down a great while before I went to make water. Anon I made water again very freely and plentifully. ”

“ Pebbles, owing their form to an investment and impregnation, with silex, of various marine animals of unknown genera, but bearing a close affinity to the alcyonia. These stones display, in general, not only the external form, but the internal structure also of these animals. The congregation of many pebbles of this genus, and indeed of the same species, in particular tracts, warrants the conclusion, that these animal substances were thus changed, whilst inhabiting that bottom of a former ocean, which now forms the stratum the contents of which are here sketched. ”

“ That's how crooked rivers make broad valleys. But they have to have the help of us pebbles, too. We're hard to get along without! Notice, the next time the river or the creek is up, the rolling, hopping motion of the pebbles as they are carried along by the rushing water. It is these pebbles grinding on the bottom and sides of the river's bed that help most in this kind of valley deepening and widening. In the same way we pebbles helped dig those grand affairs, the gorges and the canyons in the mountains. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado is a part of our work. ”

“ They are essentially constituted of a bed of gravel, formed of rounded or oval pebbles, and again covered with sandy and earthy deposits. The pebbles are principally quartzose, brown or black externally, mixed with portions of hard “Old Red” and New Red Sandstone. The soft earth which accompanies the pebbles and gravel is a mixture of argillaceous sand of a red or yellow colour, caused by the oxide of iron which enters into its composition. In the valley, properly so called, we find the pebbles again associated with other minerals which are rare at the higher levels. ”

“ Here then a remarkable phenomenon presents itself for our consideration; this flint, now so hard and unyielding, must once have been in a soft or fluid state, for the delicate markings of the case and spine of an Echinus, or Sea-Urchin, are deeply impressed on its surface; [B] and a fragile shell with its spines, is partially imbedded in its substance. [C] Nay more, upon breaking off one end of the pebble, [D] we find that a sponge, or some analogous marine zoophyte, is entirely enveloped by the flint; and also that there are here and there portions of minute corals, and scales of fishes. ”

“ Ru continued—and in his gray eyes, as he spoke, was a sly twinkle, which no one appeared to observe. "You must each take a pebble from the river bank and tie it to you, so that the god may know who you are and use his magic for you."
Very solemnly every man, woman, and child—from Yonyo the Smiling-Eyed to Zunzun and the stern-browed Grumgra—reached down and selected a pebble, which they slowly and clumsily attached to their garments by means of strips of hide and the fibers of plants. ”

“ Peveril called the hole a shaft, because, while he could neither see to the top nor clearly make out the outlines of the portions nearest at hand, it still [Pg 127] impressed him as being of artificial construction, while the opening at one side, in which he stood, also seemed very much like a drift or gallery hewn from the solid rock by human hands. ”

“ The Danes of the time also shared in the belief that the stone from the lapwing preserved from illness and sorrow as did the “swallow’s-stone” as well. [36]
It has frequently been maintained that the source of pebbles could be broadly determined by their form and surface; for example, well-rounded specimens of fairly uniform size would be classed as marine pebbles, while river-pebbles would be subangular and usually flat; pebbles of glacial origin, on the other hand, would have faceted, rounded edges, their surfaces being polished and striated. ”

“ Pepys looked very glum when John Gore told him over their wine that he could go no farther into the county of Sussex. The business between my Lord Montague and the Secretary to the Admiralty had been thrashed out confidentially in my lord’s private parlor in the Abbey the day after the adventurous return from Thorn. Mr. Pepys was ready for the Portsmouth road, and could not or would not be brought to understand for the moment John Gore’s humor in deserting him thus suddenly. The sea-captain would only hint at a reason, and Mr. Pepys’s curiosity was piqued to the extreme limit of good temper. ”

“ The sandy covering sometimes fills up furrows in the gravel, as does the gravel in the underlying tertiary formations. The pebbles are frequently whitewashed and even cemented together by a peculiar, white, friable, aluminous, fusible substance, which I believe is decomposed feldspar. At Port Desire, the gravel rested sometimes on the basal formation of porphyry, and sometimes on the upper or the lower denuded tertiary strata. It is remarkable that most of the porphyritic pebbles differ from those varieties of porphyry which occur here abundantly in situ. ”

“ In a living state, the case is flexible and filled with a granular jelly, which is the soft body of the animalcule, and the tubes and the outer surface are invested with a similar substance. After death the soft parts dissolve; but the case and its spines often remain unchanged.
In another magnified portion of the pebble, a specimen of the microscopic discoidal shells which we have already seen compose the greater part of the white chalk (Lign. 5, p. 14) , is beautifully displayed when viewed by transmitted light, under a highly magnifying power (Lign. 12) . ”