Your eyes will soon be trained to detect the prizes. It merely wants a little practice and patience, and, when the knowledge is attained, what a new world is opened up! Amid the crowd of loungers bending over every pool and rock, poking with the aimless end of an umbrella or walking-stick, picking up occasionally a bit of seaweed or a shell, you pass along unnoticed, and under their very eyes you pounce upon a real treasure—aye, and actually valuable. I was offered ten shillings the other day by a professional lapidary for a stone I found, just as it was picked up. Even if some days may prove unprofitable, still the enthusiasm of hope will buoy you up. The trout-fisher never despairs, though sometimes he returns home with creel almost empty.
There, now! You have found a genuine moss-agate. Let us sit down and examine it closely. Notice that half of the stone is coarse muddy flint, but the other half is chalcedony of a red-purple tint. See these indications of ‘moss,’ black and orange, of beautiful and delicate texture, floating in the chalcedony. Wet the pebble again to make its beauty more vivid. Look hard at it. Look into its translucent depths. Get familiar with that ‘solidified jelly,’ for when you thoroughly understand its appearance you have the key to the whole beach. The chalcedonic pebbles, when decorated with coloured markings, are called ‘agates.’ If they contain moss-like markings, they are moss-agates.
Often in a moss-agate we find evident remains of tentacles, proving that when the pebble was born it contained some zoophyte or sea anemone kind of creature, which in the process of silicification was decomposed. The substance of these agates must once have been a semi-fluent jelly like thick syrup. Perhaps the silicon was plentifully dissolved in the sea water; we cannot tell. It is a mystery of science not yet explained, therefore look with reverence upon this stone. You hold in your hand one of God’s secrets. Look at the choanite again which we found just now. That creature once lived, so frail as almost to melt in the sun when left, perhaps, on the rocks by the ebbing tide. And God has caused it to be caught in the embrace of adamantine flint, to rescue it from dissolution, and preserve it as an object of immortal beauty. The wonderful, unspeakable transformation was enacted in the waters of ocean far back in unknown ages, and the only clue to its mystery lies in that verse of the Psalm: ‘Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He in the earth, and in the sea, and in all deep places.’
Choanites always seem to me to speak eloquently of a Resurrection to a glorious state after death. I think of them living their humble life in ages before man appeared on this earth, clinging to rocks in unknown seas, waving their delicate arms with the movement of the waves, gathering the food brought within their reach by the beneficent hand of Him who takes thought for the meanest of His creatures. Nothing could seem less probable, than that these frail creatures should be preserved from destruction in death. God teaches us by them that He who has the power of life and death can stay the progress of corruption in the frailest bodies. They rise, as it were, from the dead after thousands of years, clothed in greater beauty and interest than they ever possessed in life. We should, perhaps, have shrunk from touching them when alive, but as found in their caskets of purest flint they are ‘laid with fair colours,’ and form objects of exquisite beauty. Thus we see them emerge from the grave in glorified form after a death of centuries. God, who ministered to their wants in life, also brought it about that their fragile bodies should not see corruption. He has given them immortal beauty, and by them He teaches us that He is able to deal in like manner with our own perishable bodies. Sown in corruption, they shall be raised in incorruption: sown in dishonour, they shall be raised in glory.
Choanites and Moss-Agates! If you only have patience and perseverance, you are sure to find specimens every time you take a good ramble along a shingly beach that has any likelihood of treasure. Some, of course, will be better than others. Experience will make you fastidious in taste. You will reject those that seem inferior in shape, or damaged and imperfect. Practice will soon teach you. Take your pebbles to a lapidary, if there is one in the town. Weymouth, unfortunately, does not boast one; but there are some at Brighton, I believe, and Hastings. At Worthing there is Mr. Dowsett, opposite the pier; at Eastbourne there is Mr. Hollobon, who has made one of the most magnificent collections of pebbles to be seen anywhere in England, all found, cut, and polished by himself during twenty-five years of labour and research. At Sidmouth there are three lapidaries. At Ventnor there is Mr. Billings, to whom, I think, the palm must be assigned as the most enterprising and skilful of the fraternity.
Take your stones, whenever you have the opportunity, to one of these; he will tell you whether they are worth polishing, and polish one for you at a small cost, if you wish, the charge being about sixpence a square inch. And more than that, he will show you really good stones, and tell you where they were found, and encourage you, if he sees you really interested in the subject.
There are other varieties of these fossil-agates, but the popular names are not worth much. You may call them all agates, and collect specimens of every variety with a view to their intrinsic beauty; and you may try and imagine what the creatures were like, and hunt them up in books as you proceed.
Let us leave the Chesil Beach and speed in a flash of thought some six hundred miles, right away to Montrose, N.B. We cross the estuary by the ferry, and walk down towards the lighthouse. Those low rocks are basaltic, or trap. In them we find a totally different class of agates—Ring-agates: see them sticking like plums in a cake. With hammer and chisel we can knock out as many as we please. Many prove hollow when cut, ceiled and paved with beautiful quartz-crystals. But others have the exquisite ringed formation, and the delicacy of the concentric bands is full of wonder. Among the rocks farther down the coast we can pick up numbers already separated from their rocky cavities by the disintegrating processes of sea and weather. I collected 300 in three days.
It is probable that the cavities in which they occur were formed by gases escaping when the soft rock was growing solid—just as cavities are formed in bread. Then water charged with silicious deposit filtered into the cavities. But no satisfactory explanation of the beautiful parallel banding has yet been set forth. Once more we are confronted by a Divine secret. In these cavities—deep places—the Lord did whatsoever He pleased.