120 ROMER’S DESCRIPTION OF THE CHALK 
3. Upper White Chalk Marl. [Oberer kreidemergel.] 
At a short distance from the northern foot of the Deister, 
about two hours’ walk (zuei stunden) from Hanover, and in 
the neighbourhood of the village of Gehrden, is situated a hill 
about 100 feet in height, which is laid open towards the west- 
ern side near the windmill, and on the north-western declivity, 
by quarries. The lower masses of stone consist of beds, from 
4 to 10 feet in thickness, of a grayish sandstone; on which rest 
some sandy marls about 20 feet in thickness, which are more or 
less compact, in some places slaty, and alternately of a yellow- 
ish-gray and bluish-gray colour. The lower beds are rifted into 
large square masses, while the upper layers exhibit no remark- 
able separations; the latter inclose in some places so great a 
number of minute, broken and worn corals, that the stone ac- 
quires the appearance of a coarsely granular conglomerate ; and 
all the strata contain numerous fossils. 
This upper chalk-marl presents, near Halberstadt, a some- 
what different appearance. On proceeding southward from that 
place to the Spiegelberg, we first observe, on the high road, the 
gray chalk-marl (planer); very soon, however, a sandy formation 
appears, and at the foot of the mountain a coarse conglomerate, 
of quartz, with a blackish or brownish, strongly ferruginous, sili- 
ceous cement; in this the granules of quartz are rounded, become 
gradually smaller, the proportion of iron in the connecting 
medium decreases; and, gradually, the conglomerate passes into 
a fine-grained yellowish or whitish, slightly-stratified sandstone, 
separated into large blocks, which is very much disposed to de- 
cay, forms some isolated rocks, and may perhaps attain a thick- 
ness of 150 to 200 feet. This latter rock forms a broad plateau 
or a flat trough, which extends southwards as far as Munchhof, 
near Quedlinburg, where it again rests upon the gray chalk-marl 
(plener),in bedsinclining toward the north,and has alongitudinal 
extension of several miles in the direction of the stratification. 
A third detached appearance of a portion of the upper chalk 
marl occurs near Goslar on the northern border of the Hartz, 
the Sudmerberg of that neighbourhood, belonging to this forma- 
tion; at the southern foot of this hill, in the bed of the Abe- 
zucht, there succeeds to the gray chalk-marl (planer), into which 
it gradually passes, a sandy marl, on which rests the remaining 
mass of the hill, consisting of a conglomerate of quartz with an 
