26 GEOLOGY OF THE ISLE OF WIGHT 



ravine behind partly filled with fallen pine trees. The 

 whole fallen mass has since sunk lower and nearer to the 

 sea. The broken ground overgrown with trees called the 

 Landslip, as well as the whole extent of the ground from 

 Ventnor and Niton, has been formed in a similar way. 

 But the clay which by its slip has produced these is 

 another clay called the Gault, higher up in the strata. 

 At the top of the high cliff near Luccombe Chine a hard 

 gritty stratum of rock called the Carstone is seen above 

 the Sandrock, and above it lies the Gault clay, which 

 flows over the edge of the cliff. 



In the rock ledges and fallen blocks of stone between 

 Shanklin and Luccombe many more fossils may be found 

 than in the lower part of the Ferruginous sands. Besides 

 bands of oysters, blocks of stone are to be found crowded 

 with a pretty little shell called Rhynchonella. There are 

 others with many Terebratulcz, and others with fragments 

 of sea urchins. The Terebratulae and Rhynchonellae 

 belong to a curious group of shells, the Brachiopods, which 

 are placed in a class distinct from the Mollusca proper. 

 They were very common in the very ancient seas of the 

 Cambrian period, the period of the most ancient fossils 

 yet found, and some, the Lingulae, have lived on almost 

 unchanged to the present day. One of the two valves is 

 larger than the other, and near the smaller end you will 

 see a little round hole. Out of this hole, when the creature 

 was alive, came a sort of neck, which attached it to the 

 rock, like the barnacles. There is a very hard ferruginous 

 band, of which nodules may be found along the shore, 

 full of beautifully perfect impressions of fossils, though 

 the fossils themselves are gone. Casts of a little round 

 bivalve shell, Thetironia minor, may easily be got out. 

 The nodules also contain casts of Trigonia, Panopcea, etc. 

 A stratum is sometimes exposed on the shore containing 

 fossils converted into pyrites. A long shell, Gervillia 

 sublanceolata, is the most frequent. 



