152 Seeley— Section of the Lower Chalk near Ely. 
evidence of false-bedding, in that the planes below the line at 
the top of fig. 1 dip south, while those above it dip north. 
These strata are low down in the Lower Chalk, and hold Avz- 
cula grypheotdes and Pecten Beaveri. 
Since discovering this section, I have met with another in- 
stance of false-bedding on a larger scale, and not so complicated, 
in the Lower Chalk of Cherry-Hinton, near Cambridge. This 
is shown in fig. 3. Perhaps such sections are to be looked for 
WSwW. ENE. 
Fig. 3. Section (60 feet long and 10 feet high) in the Lower Chalk of Cherry-Hinton, 
shewing false-bedding. (In another part of the pit, one seam at twelve yards from its 
commencement is one foot thick, and four feet at six yards further.) 
in all sandy and argillaceous Chalk; for the presence of such 
impurities must always lend a probability to its having been 
accumulated near to land. 
In this part of England the Lower Chalk is thin, and at 
Cherry-Hinton not more than 80 feet thick. There, at 30 feet 
from the base, it is as hard when wet as an Oolite lime- 
stone, splitting into massive blocks. I have seen from that 
place halves of Sea-urchins separated by slips; sometimes in 
Holaster the anus and mouth slipped together. Whether such 
shiftings are due to earthquakes I think doubtful, and regard 
them as the result of contraction. 
Here the Chalk is porous, and water soaks through it; but 
Professor Kangsley tells me that chalk becomes impervious 
when ‘puddled’; so that clear ponds of water, full all the year 
round, are formed on the chalk-hills by merely digging and 
well puddling a hole. Now it appears to me that at the time 
of deposition, the sea, washing the fine chalky mud about in 
this cross-stratification, or even enough to embed fishes, must 
have effectually performed on a large scale this operation that 
the farmer calls puddling. And if so, sit would appear highly pro- 
bable that the Chalk when deposited was a rock nearly as imper- 
vious as clay. A very simple test applied to water which has 
soaked through chalk shows that it has dissolved part of the 
carbonate of lime: that is, it has rendered it more porous than 
it was before. Of course the next water that passes through 
will make it more porous still; and to the water which soaked 
through before either it must have been even less pervious. 
Therefore I would suggest that the open absorbent character of 
