34 Lincolnshire Notes & Queries. 



Keuper deposit, and at the same angle with it, appears a broad 

 black band of rock, utterly different from the bed on which it 

 lies. 



The Keuper marls are, as I have said, devoid of fossil 

 remains, but this new deposit abounds nay, literally swarms 

 with them ; while, instead of marly deposits, the new strata 

 consist of fissile slaty shales, full of iron pyrites >the token of 

 exuberant life and narrow bands of sandstone glittering with 

 mica : and, what adds to the wonder is, that, towards the base 

 of this deposit, there lies a thin band of rock, not more than 

 an inch in thickness, composed entirely of fish remains, bones, 

 scales, teeth, and coprolites, pressed down into a hard solid 

 mass ; while a similar bed, scarcely as thick, occurs a little 

 higher up. And how can all this have come about ? 



To understand it we must know something of the world 

 we live on. 



Originally a vast nebulous mass, which gradually condensed, 

 it is now (as generally accepted) a thin crust, some 25 miles 

 thick at the most, resting on a molten fluid substratum, under 

 which (as some think), lies a solid rigid core. Now a thin 

 crust over a fluid cannot be stable, and the surface therefore of 

 our globe is for ever changing, rising here and sinking there ; 

 rising in parts where denudation makes it thinner, and sinking 

 in regions where, through volcanic action or the pouring on of 

 the debris of large rivers and other similar causes, matter is 

 being piled up and the strata thickened. 



And, in the region we are considering, action of this latter 

 kind had taken place. The older strata had begun to sink, 

 and, by degrees, the waters of a great ocean, coming up from 

 the south over France, were let in upon them. The inland 

 lake became an arm of the Liassic sea, and the Rhoetic beds 

 were formed. 



It must not be supposed, however, that all this took place 

 suddenly. It was the result of no convulsion of nature, no 

 rending of the rocks and inrush of the sea, but it came about 

 quietly and imperceptibly, occupying as much time, probably, 

 as would be necessary for so great a change in our own days. 

 First, as the land continued to sink, would come the want of 

 drainage, then the morass, then the tidal wash, and, last of all, 

 the full open sea. It was the work of ages. 



The Rhoetic beds, which owe their name to the Alps of 

 Lombardy (the ancient Rhoetia), the Grisons, and the Tyrol, 

 where they attain a considerable thickness, had not been 



