Much to his surprise Sir Charles told him
that certain forms, like Terebratula, appeared to be identical
from the beginning to the end of geological time. Since this was
altogether too much uniformity and much too little selection,
Adams gave up the attempt to begin at the beginning, and tried
starting at the end -- himself. Taking for granted that the
vertebrates would serve his purpose, he asked Sir Charles to
introduce him to the first vertebrate. Infinitely to his
bewilderment, Sir Charles informed him that the first vertebrate
was a very respectable fish, among the earliest of all fossils,
which had lived, and whose bones were still reposing, under
Adams's own favorite Abbey on Wenlock Edge.
By this time, in 1867 Adams had learned to know Shropshire
familiarly, and it was the part of his diplomatic education which
he loved best. Like Catherine Olney in "Northanger Abbey," he
yearned for nothing so keenly as to feel at home in a
thirteenth-century Abbey, unless it were to haunt a
fifteenth-century Prior's House, and both these joys were his at
Wenlock. With companions or without, he never tired of it.
Whether he rode about the Wrekin, or visited all the historical
haunts from Ludlow Castle and Stokesay to Boscobel and Uriconium;
or followed the Roman road or scratched in the Abbey ruins, all
was amusing and carried a flavor of its own like that of the
Roman Campagna; but perhaps he liked best to ramble over the Edge
on a summer afternoon and look across the Marches to the
mountains of Wales.
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