GENEKAL ACCOUNT OF THE DEPOSITS. 11 



Goslar, Schoeppenstedt, and Salzgitter, the same pale red, yellow 

 and brown phosphatic nodules with the same phosphatic casts of 

 Ammonites and Myacites, which could not be distinguished from 

 those at Upware and Potton. 



The contemporaneous Nodules of the Upware and Brickhill 

 Nodule bed. These are utterly insignificant as compared with the 

 ordinary derived nodules; they are not recognised as 'coprolites' 

 by the workmen, and are rejected from the sorted material by the 

 'pickers'. 



Looking over the waste rubbish heaps at the workings we 

 occasionally meet with an irregular or cylindrical nodule of a 

 hardened sandy nature, made up of quartz, ironstone, and phos- 

 phatic grains and fragments, and shewing, more or less distinctly, 

 its phosphatic character on a fractured surface. The amount of 

 phosphate of lime contained in them is very small and there may 

 be none at all distinguishable by the naked eye ; so that at 

 Upware they never merit the title of Phosphatic nodules. They 

 occur in the sandy beds, mostly near the junctions with the copro- 

 lite seams. 



Contemporaneous nodules of the Neocomian period do how- 

 ever occur in very pure forms in other districts. At Speeton, 

 besides the junction coprolite bed resting upon the Portlandian 

 zone they occur scattered through the clay series, so that a number 

 of the indigenous fossils in the shrimp-bed and elsewhere (Meyeria, 

 Ammonites, &c.) are now permeated with and surrounded by the 

 phosphate. Again in the Tealby series of Lincolnshire septarian 

 phosphatic concretions are scattered through the clay-bed beneath 

 the ironstone, being formed around large crustaceans (Hoploparia?) 

 and other fossils as nuclei. In the Hanoverian clay of the Deister 

 we again meet with the contemporaneous phosphate around Meyeria, 

 or in precisely the same condition as at Speeton. But the most 

 important occurrence of contemporaneous phosphatic nodules is 

 at Downham Market, in Norfolk, first recorded by Mr Teall in his 

 Sedgwick Prize Essay, pp. 20, 21. For here they are so rich and 

 abundant that they are worked for manure. 



In Dec. 1876, the section at Downham Market was as follows : 

 (4) Gault becoming sandy towards the base; containing scattered 

 phosphatic nodules or "Militiamen," and phosphatised fossils. 

 Ammonites interruptus, Inoceramus concentricus, etc., 10 ft. 



