William Whitaker—The Red Chalk of Norfolk. 23 
Greensand, or of Chalk and Gault. Mayhap there will be volunteers 
to rush into “the imminent deadly breach,” and appropriate these 
views, or so much as I may leave of them. 
We may now turn to the various statements that have been put 
before us, and see what can be made of them, and in what our later 
knowledge may affect them. Fortunately it is not needful to begin 
at the beginning, for Prof. Seeley, in his first paper,’ has cleared the 
way for us. Although the Professor has shown the illogical 
character of some of the conclusions of geologists, yet it seems to 
me that he has not quite avoided some like mistakes himself. His 
illustration of the Red Crag with its abundance of Recent species, 
and which nevertheless is not a raised recent beach, is hardly to the 
point : we know that the Crag everywhere yields these species, and 
not in comparatively few peculiar places. Moreover, they are con- 
tained in the ordinary Crag, and not in a deposit of exceptional 
character that happens to occur locally in the geological horizon 
where Crag is elsewhere found. Besides, this illustration, if strictly 
to the point, would go further than its author carries it ; for it might 
just as well point to the extension downwards of Chalk species into 
Gault as into Upper Greensand, and so might be claimed by Mr. 
Wiltshire as in favour of the Gault theory. I do not see either the 
foree of the argument that the difficulty of separating the Red 
from the White Chalk is in favour of the former being classed as 
Upper Greensand, it would seem rather in favour of classing it as 
Chalk. The chief objection, however, to Seeley’s view is one that 
he could not have foreseen,—founded, as it is, on later researches. 
What is the Upper Greensand to which he refers the Red Rock ? 
Clearly, from frequent references, it is the so-called Upper Greensand 
of Cambridge, the “coprolite-bed,” or thin layer of phosphatic 
nodules in green marly sand that has been so largely worked in 
Cambridgeshire. Now this really insignificant layer—for it is 
generally thinner even than the Red Chalk at Hunstanton—has been 
the subject of careful research, and my colleague, Mr. Jukes- 
Browne,’ has, I think, conclusively shown that it does not really 
belong to the Upper Greensand ; but is nothing more than the base 
of the Chalk Marl, the greater number of its fossils having been 
derived from the destruction of other beds, Upper Gault to wit. 
Therefore, by our present lights Prof. Seeley’s arguments would tend 
to show that the Red Rock is Chalk rather than Upper Greensand, 
though I fear he still holds to the older view as regards the age of 
the nodule-bed. As so great a number of the Cambridge fossils are 
Gault species, and derived from the Gault, the Professor’s tables, 
showing so large a proportion of Upper Greensand fossils in the 
Red Rock, are invalidated. 
With regard to the same observer’s idea * that the sponge-bed (of 
1 Ann. Nat. Hist. ser. 3, vol. vil. pp. 233-244 (1861). 
. 2 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxxi. p. 256 (1875), and The Geology of the 
Neighbourhood of Cambridge, pp. 24, 25, 29-31, 1382, 149-154. Geological Survey 
Memoir, 8vo. London, 1881. : 
3 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xx. pp. 327-832 (1864), and Ann. Nat. Hist. 
ser. 3, vol. xiv. p. 276, 
