J. G. WALLER ON SAND. 



59 



specimens, representing upper, middle, and lower beds, as well as 

 other series, but they all declare the same general facts, quartzose 

 sand, with few intrusions of flint, more or less comminuted. So we 

 will take into consideration the layer styled " Pebble bed," where 

 the flint is rolled into marbles of various sizes, intermingled with and 

 embedded in sand. Here, if anywhere, one would expect to meet 

 with atoms of flint in abundance. But the examination of the fine 

 sand of the bed referred to shows the same result, and it suggests to 

 us that flint abrasion produces very small and thin flakes which easily 

 break up and disappear into very minute parts, but that the harder 

 quartz, never taking the same form of fracture, is a more enduring 

 form of silex. So that the one disappears rapidly, whilst the other 

 continues an almost indefinite time. This is the only way I can 

 account for a phenomenon so apparently singular ; but I am 

 open to the conviction of a better solution, if that can be given. The 

 result, then, is remarkable in the all but absent flint particles. 

 These are, indeed, represented, but they are few in number in com- 

 parison with those of the quartz. There are other substances than 

 this, but, as before, it is the predominant form, although in the 

 midst of roiled flints. The sand is very fine in character, the 

 particles of quartz very small, resembling those of the brick clay. 



The " striped sands" immediately beneath this now require to be 

 examined, and one would beforehand be ready, with the facts before 

 us, to pronounce upon the result as one obvious or logically certain, 

 for quartz appears to be everywhere the staple product in the com- 

 position of sand. Of these, so well represented in the Isle of 

 Wight, at Alum Bay, I have got an extensive series through 

 the kindness of Mr. J. Starkie Gardner, F.G.S., than whom 

 no one is better acquainted with the Tertiary System. It 

 may seem to some an absurd reiteration to go on proclaiming the 

 same results through a series so evidently cognate ; but this is the 

 only way to exhaust our evidence, and repetition is confirmatory. 

 The series obtained from Alum Bay, which I have examined, are 

 eight in number, and their story is similar to what has been 

 already recorded ; but it would take some time to give them that 

 minute examination which would make a scientific record. I have, 

 nevertheless, made an analysis, which will be found at the end of 

 this paper. 



We now come to the chalk from whose upper series our vast 

 deposits of flint shingle must have been derived by the extensive 



