Yol. 54.] OF CENOMANIAN AND TURONIAN NEAE HONITON. 243 



Another quarry at the western end of Wilmington continues the 

 section a little lower, and of this I took the following notes : — In 

 the soil at the top of the pit are loose lumps and blocks of the 

 quartziferous limestone (No. 2 of the last section) and larger masses 

 of hard calcareous sandstone, which is known as grizzle by the 

 workmen. These blocks seem to be such portions of the sandstone 

 as have resisted the action of acidulated water better than 

 the rest of the rock, which has been largely decalcified and dis- 

 integrated. Measured from a cleared space at the bottom of one 

 of these blocks, the depth of the quarry is 31 feet, and the face 

 is vertical, for the sandstone is soft enough to be chopped out 

 with the broad end of a pick. The whole of this is dug for sand, 

 ^nd used for making concrete, for rough-casting walls, and for other 

 purposes. 



This calcareous sand or soft sandstone is equally coarse from top 

 to bottom ; the highest 3 or 4 feet includes lumps of less disintegrated 

 rock, and these are picked out and thrown aside. They contain 

 many fossils, which are mostly in a good state of preservation and 

 are easily detached from the weathered lumps. 



The rest of the sand cuts with an even face, but is traversed by 

 three layers of siliceous concretions ; the highest of these layers 

 Consists of large flattish and lenticular concretions, white or pink 

 outside, brown within, and containing nuclei of chalcedonic chert ; 

 the lower layers are smaller irregular concretions with projecting 

 knobs, and some are cylindrical like siliceous sponges. They 

 contain sponge-spicules, and seem to be sponges more or less filled 

 with sand and cemented by chalcedonic silica. 



In this mass of sand fossils are rare, with the exception of 

 Exogyra conica and Janira quinquecostata, but the fossiliferous 

 sandstone passes down into it without the slightest sign of a break. 



Wishing to ascertain how much deeper the sand extended, I 

 instructed a workman to dig a hole in the floor of the quarry, but 

 at about 12 inches below the floor he came upon a hard rocky 

 rsandstone, diff'ering from the rest in being somewhat ferraginous 

 and compacted by a hard tufaceous kind of calcium carbonate, 

 probably redeposited carbonate. The sand-grains were large, and 

 some small pebbles occurred ; the only fossils seen were Holccster 

 •carinatus^ Exogyra conica, and a saurian tooth. 



I was informed that a hole had been dug in the orchard, just 

 outside the pit and about on a level with its floor, through 6 or 7 feet 

 of similar rocky material, without reaching the bottom of it. Nor 

 did I find any section which exposed the base, though it is probably 

 sometimes to be seen in the sand-pit by the side of the railway a 

 little more than | mile north of Wilmington. Here the beds are 

 dipping to the east at about 3°; at the western end green and 

 brown sand with cherts are seen, and farther east more than 

 20 feet of coarse yellowish-white sand like that at Wilmington, 

 passing beneath grizzle and quartziferous limestone at the eastern 

 «nd. The junction was not visible at the time of my visit, but the 

 workman said that at the base of the sand there was a hard whitish 

 fiandstone-rock. 



