Due to a gentle north-north-easterly dip of the strata 

 it declines gradually to the shore and may he followed 

 on the southern side of East Vi/ear Bay as a seaweed 

 covered reef before it is lost heneath the tide mark. 

 Its outcrop runs through Folkestone to Cheriton and 

 Newington and a small outlier caps the sandpit just 

 ahove Sandling Junction Station, The bed is about a 

 foot thick, full of small phosphorite nodules, and 

 yields a rich fossil fauna, mainly in the form of casts. 

 Split open, the nodules exhibit a dark brown groundmass 

 studded with sand grains, small pebbles and particles of 

 the green mineral glauconite, a frequent associate of 

 phosphate. So close is the agreement between the 

 detrital matter in the nodules and that of the bed in 

 v/hich they lie that it is obvious that the nodules are 

 merely phosphate-cemented portions of the original sea- 

 floor. 



About two feet above the Mammillatum Bed is the 

 Sulphur Band, the bottom bed of the Gault also crowded 

 with phosphorite nodules. These are mostly veined and 

 encrusted with iron pyrites, the decomposition of which 

 gives rise to a yellowish efflorescence from which the 

 bed takes its name. It is present over a wide area in 

 the Folkestone neighbourhood and forms a hard ledge in 

 East Wear Bay. Next in succession above the Sulphur 

 Band is a thin seam of green sandy clay containing 

 numerous phosphatic septaria which fly to pieces when 

 tapped with the hammer. These are apparently lumps of 

 phosphatized mud which have shrunk in volume during 

 consolidation, leaving a space in the centre from v/hich 

 cracks radiate. The cracks may be filled with selenite , 

 a glassy form of gypsum, or with gleaming iron pyriteSo 



Immediately overlying this green sandy bed is yet 

 another seam of phosphorite nodules. This is in the 

 zone of Hoplites dentatus and almost every nodule 

 encloses or is a cast of the zone fossil or an allied 

 species of ammonite. A rich harvest will rev/ard the 

 collector who visits East Wear Bay after a storm has 

 scoured the sand from the outcrop of this bed. 



