in.] THE STONES IN THE WALL. 83 



end to get for our grain and pulse ; which we are im- 

 porting, as expensive bones, all the way from Buenos 

 Ayres. Only find enough of them, and you will 

 increase immensely the food supply of England, and 

 perhaps make her independent of foreign phosphates 

 in case of war." 



His advice was acted on ; for the British farmer is 

 by no means the stupid personage which townsfolk 

 are too apt to fancy him. This bed of phosphates was 

 found everywhere in the Greensand, underlying the 

 Chalk. It may be traced from Dorsetshire through 

 England to Cambridge, and thence, I believe, into 

 Yorkshire. It may be traced again, I believe, all round 

 the Weald of Kent and Sussex, from Hythe to Farnham 

 where it is peculiarly rich and so to Eastbourne 

 and Beachey Head ; and it furnishes, in Cambridge- 

 shire, the greater part of those so-called " coprolites," 

 which are used perpetually now for manure, being 

 ground up, and then treated with sulphuric acid, till 

 they become a " soluble super-phosphate of lime." 



So much for the useless " hobby," as some fancy 

 it, of poking over old bones and stones, and learning a 

 little of the composition of this earth on which God 

 has placed us. 



How to explain the presence of this vast mass of 

 animal matter, in one or two thin bands right across 

 England, I know not. That the fossils have been 

 rolled on a sea-beach is plain to those who look at 

 them. But what caused so vast a destruction of 

 animal life along that beach, must remain one of the 

 buried secrets of the past. 



And now we are fast nearing another world, which 

 is far younger than that coprolite bed, and has been 

 formed under circumstances the most opposite to it. 



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