MAGNESIAN-LIMESTONE OF THE COUNTY OP DTJUnAM. 61 



displayed; and the facilities for their examination and study- 

 are increased by their exposure along the coast line, and in 

 the extensive quarries which have been for a long series of 

 years worked at Fulwell and Southwick for the production of 

 lime, the greater part of which has for many years been shipped 

 to Scotland in small sailing vessels. 



So remarkably like corals are some of these beds of limestone 

 that the partial observer jumps immediately to the conclusion 

 that many of the beds are of organic origin, and that they 

 are really formed of corals in different states of preservation . 

 and this opinion when once formed by ignorant and untrained 

 observers is very hard to dispel, as the following anecdote will, 

 for example, shew. 



One fine Saturday morning, not long ago, a gentleman resid- 

 ing in one of the suburbs of Newcastle was busily engaged 

 arranging some very fine masses of the coralloidal limestone 

 from Fullwell Hill into a rockery in his garden. A stranger, 

 respectably dressed in black, came near, and leant for a consider- 

 able time over the garden rails watching the proceedings very 

 attentively. At length, finding words, he accosted the rockery 

 maker in a decided tone with, ''You've got a lot of fine corals 

 there, sir." "Corals," replied the owner, "I am told that they 

 are not corals but only curious forms of the Magnesian-limestone, 

 which are very common at the Fulwell Hill Quarry." The 

 respectable man drew himself up to his full height, and with 

 some warmth and emphasis replied, ' ' Not corals ; you must not 

 tell me that. I'm a schoolmaster, and know all about these 

 things, and I say they are corals, and no mistake." This was 

 unanswerable, and the respectable schoolmaster, who certainly 

 was ' abroad ' that day, walked off with the self-satisfied air of 

 a person who had finally settled a very knotty question. 



But the coralloidal form of limestone, though of great interest, 

 is not the kind of structure to which I wish at this time to con- 

 fine my remarks. It is to the structure which the late Prof. 

 Sedgwick long ago styled "the large globular concretionary 

 structure," and which, as you can see at "Whitburn and Roker, 

 occurs in beds or pockets, interstratified between other beds of 



