EECEEATIVE SCIENCE. 



127 



exhumes tlie shells, and hones, and leaves, and 

 stems of a hy-gone creation, and by his 

 labours and his reasonings raises up strange 

 forms to our wondering sight. Not, however, 

 from those " coloured sands " themselves does 

 he bring us aught — the gaudy peacock is 

 songless, the radiant humming-bird is mute, 

 and those gay strata are fossilless. Notliing 

 is preserved in them, so far as we yet know 

 — and sharp eyes have looked them sharply 

 over — of the spoils of the sea that spread 

 them out, or of the relics of the land of 

 which they formed the vivid fringe. But 

 the clays on the right and on the left of 

 them abound in fossils, and contain the 

 bones of snakes — great coiling snakes, rival- 

 ling in strength and size the great con- 

 stricting boa. Still higher (to the left), in 

 the " Headon" beds, which, overlooking the 

 Barton and Bracklesham clays, cap the hill 

 on the north, some few remains of the tapir- 



FiG. 2. — 1, Bembridge limestone; 2, Osborne beds; 

 3, 4, 5, Headon beds ; 5, Headon sands ; 6, Middle 

 Bagshot sands ; 7, Lower Bagshot sands (coloured 

 sands') ; 8, London clay ; 9, Woolwich beds ; c, 

 chalk. 



like animals which have made the quarries 

 of Montmartre so renowned may be found. 

 Embedded in the solid masonry of the great 

 Pyramids of Egypt, men long since noticed 

 coin-like objects, which tliey ignorantly 

 thought to be the lentils the ancient work- 

 men cast aside at their meals, and which in 

 lapse of time had been petrified in the rock. 

 These philosophers have fancifully named 

 "money-stones," or nummulites. In truth, 

 they are the petrified remains of pore- 

 shelled animals of very simple grade, as low 

 in organization as the sponges ; and the 

 "nummulite" is one of the species of a 

 widely-spread and long-continued class, the 

 foraminifera. In the early part of that 

 tertiary age, in which these coloured sands 



and plastic clays of Alum. Bay were formed 

 into rock-beds, they swarmed in every sea, 

 and myriads may be picked but of the 

 "Bracklesham" and " Barton " clays imme- 

 diately above our "ruddy sands" (indicated 

 by Nos. 6 and 7 in our section, Fig. 2).* 



With these last fossilless sands are com- 

 mingled seams of white pipe-clay, one of 

 which, six feet in thickness, is a natural 

 herbarium, for, between its thin stratula* 

 brown, dead leaves of ancient forest trees 

 are spread by thousands, looking now, wheu 

 the clay is split or cloven, like sepia drawings 

 on white card-board. In the upper clays and 

 sands at the foot of Headon Hill, and to the 

 north of the " coloured sands," and in the 

 same beds at Horditell, on the opposite coast 

 of Hampshire, crocodilian and mammalian 

 remains have been also found ; and the 

 " London clay," under (south of) the same 

 " coloured sands," may also be rich in fossil 

 turtles, crocodiles, sharks, and sea-shells. 

 The " Woolwich beds," formerly called by 

 the unfitting term of "plastic clay" (for 

 there are many ot}iev plastic clays), may also 

 contain the relics of one or two species of 

 mammals, with its innumerable fresh-water 

 shells. 



From exhumations of extinct beings, and 

 romantic visions of ancient by-gone scenes — 

 from such glimpses of the age of life that 

 was before our own, the geologist reverts to 

 those uptiirned beds of sands and rock, and, 

 not content with wondering how they got so, 

 he guages the dip, or inclination, and observes 

 the bending of the beds in the regions around. 

 Even within the limits of the island itself, 

 he finds them curving less and less, and at 

 last reposing nearly horizontally in their 

 own proper places in its northern portion. 



* At Alum Bay, the fossiliferous clay associated 

 with the sands is immediately above them. At White- 

 cliff Bay, it is in them, just below their top. In the 

 latter case it is the equivalent of the Bracklesham 

 clay ; in the former, of the Barton clay. The Herd- 

 well clays are still higher than the Barton and e^uiva* 

 lent to the Headon sands. 



