William Whitaker—The Red Chalk of Norfolk. 20 
give us that variety without which our science would be nowhere, 
are we to stamp her work as not being typical when it happens not 
to agree with what, from our small point of view, seems to us the 
right thing? Why should Folkestone, or any other British town or 
district, be taken as a typical spot, rather than Russia, or India, or 
America? Moreover, who is to decide what is typical Gault (or 
anything else) ? The fact is that these attempts at squaring Nature 
depend wholly on the mere accident of place and person. By 
typical, geologists generally mean as seen at the place where, to their 
minds, any bed is most correctly developed. One man’s type, there- 
fore, may be another man’s exception. 
Mr. Wiltshire’s illustration of the argument that the lithological 
difference between Red Chalk and Gault is no bar to considering 
them as the same, is unfortunate, for the Carstone at Sandringham is 
not so different from the same bed at Hunstanton as he thinks. 
There is Carstone at both places, and in the same geological position : 
the pure white sand near Sandringham, which he thinks represents 
the Carstone of Hunstanton, does not do so; for the sand is at a 
lower geological level, and separated from the Carstone by a thin 
mass of clay, all three however being parts of one formation. 
Prof. Bonney’s! notice, in 1875, seems marked by an absence of 
dogmatism and by philosophical conclusions. 
I cannot agree with Dr. Barrois? in separating the Norfolk Chalk, 
etc., from its more southerly kin, as not being connected with the 
London Basin, and not dipping under the Tertiary beds thereof. Our 
Norfolk Chalk is just as much connected with the London Basin as any 
other Chalk, and it does dip under the Tertiary beds, though certainly 
there is a very wide area in which no such beds oceur. Neither can 
I agree with the classification proposed, which seems to be founded 
on fossil evidence only, a dangerous thing. If there be any gap 
between the sponge-bed and the Red Chalk, it is strange that the 
same peculiar sponge occurs in both. The evidenee, too, that I have 
gathered in Norfolk makes the sponge-bed higher than the Chloritic 
Marl, or even than the whole of the Chalk Marl. In the name of 
Norfolk geologists I may thank Dr. Barrois for his lists of fossils 
from these and the overlying chalk, no such detailed information 
having been given us before. 
The short notes of Mr. Gunn? have, I think, hit a weak point 
of most authors, by his argument that the newest fossils should 
have the chief weight in fixing the age of the bed. 
I may now allude to the few ideas that have occurred to me 
on the subject of the Red Chalk whilst working in West Norfolk, 
and in the first place will take rather a pet notion that, alas! I 
can make nothing of. It occurred to me that, considering the 
treacherous nature of the red colouring of many beds, and the 
! Cambridgeshire Geology. Appendix ii. 
2 Recherches sur le Terrain Crétacé supérieur de l’Angleterre,. . . . pp. 156-158 
(1876). 
“8 Proc. Norwich Geol. Soc. pt. i. p. 23 (1878). 
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