14 Mr. Toulmin Smith on the Formation 



the pieces in these positions and to prevent injury to the exposed 

 parts of the Ventriculite, but filled up the space made by the 

 fracture, and afterwards gradually hardened, bearing itself no 

 trace of the event. 



I have also another and larger specimen in which precisely the 

 same state of facts is found, and which therefore, though an im- 

 portant illustration of the results learnt from the last specimen, 

 it is unnecessary to describe in detail. 



Fig. 3 of the Plate exhibits phsenomena of the same character, 

 but carried further. A mere glance at the figure will show that 

 the mass of flint is covered by sharp angular pieces of broken 

 flint adhering to its surface. These do not, as in the case of 

 fig. 1, rise as mere ridges. They are clearly broken fragments 

 of a flint already solidified, which have here 4odged on this mass 

 while in the act of solidifying, and have become a part of it. 

 The places of union show no mark of junction or fracture : they 

 are completely united. The edges are sharp enough to cut the 

 finger, and the mass c, the largest, and which is itself, as will be 

 seen, cross-cracked into four pieces which are now at slightly 

 difi*erent elevations, rises at least the sixth of an inch above the 

 mass onto which it is fixed. The edges of these pieces are not 

 covered with the mealy coating *. It should be remarked that 

 the minute angular fragments scattered all over the surface of 

 this specimen are much more numerous than could be repre- 

 sented with clearness in the figure, and that the whole mass on 

 which these angular fragments rest (the left-hand portion of the 

 figure) has received a slip over to the right, so as to leave a ridge 

 at « 6 of a quarter of an inch high and having a very sharp edge, 

 and beyond which to the right not a single angular fragment is 

 found. 



It is clear that in this case a very difi'erent state of things took 

 place to what happened in fig. I, although equally clear, as in 

 that case, that the sponge theory is directly opposed by the facts, 

 as neither could any sponge thus fracture (which, if that theory 

 be true, must be assumed), nor could such broken fragments fall 

 in this manner onto a soft sponge and become thus part of its 

 substance. It is obvious that a mass of flint had become per- 

 fectly solidified; that that solid mass became by some accident 

 greatly shattered ; and that some of the fragments fell through 



* Thus disproving a view which has been advanced, that the mealy coat- 

 ing is the mere effect of exposure to carbonate of lime and the deprivation 

 of some of the water of the flint thereby. These parts have been in every 

 respect equally exposed with all other parts, but were not so until after they 

 had become solid. The mealy coating does not seem to present any difii- 

 culty, but space will not allow me now to enter into it further than to add 

 that I have found it covering a large part of the surface of flints inclosed in 

 Echinites. 



