308 Dr. FiTTON on the Strata below the Chalk. 



Oxford clay. — The Oxford clay succeeds to the coral rag on the north-west of Haddenham, as 

 has been mentioned, and of Ely. It is the lowest stratum in Cambridgeshire, and forms the base 

 of the Great Bedford Level. 



(139.) Chalk in Rutlandshire. — The rise of the strata last mentioned^ com- 

 bined with the general features and structure of Cambridgeshire, would seem 

 to indicate the final outcrop and disappearance of the upper members of the 

 Series ; but from a passage in a paper by Mr. Barker, published in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions for 1791*, and quoted by Dr.Bucklandt, it appears that 

 chalk has been discovered at Ridlington in Rutlandshire, about forty miles 

 from the general range of the chalk hills in Cambridgeshire and Norfolk;};. 

 So that if this statement be correct, we might expect to find some of the beds 

 below the chalk, in the wide tract of intervening country. The only cir- 

 cumstance mentioned by Mr. Barker which throws doubt upon the suppo- 

 sition that this chalk is in its original position, is, that the Jlints, which he 

 states to occur 'Mn rows, lying in it as is usual in the South of England," 

 are " broken, and not whole ones." So that it is possible that the entire mass 

 may consist of transported fragments of chalk, and be analogous, but on a 

 much larger scale, to the loose pieces of that substance found by Mr. Cony- 

 beare in my presence during an excursion in Northamptonshire, near Sywell; 

 a place about thirty miles distant from the nearest point of the chalk 

 escarpment. Ridlington, where this patch of chalk is stated to have been 

 observed, is placed in Smith's map of the county, on the verge of a platform 

 of the Lower oolite, resting immediately on the blue marl at the upper part 

 of the lias ; and the map bears no indication whatsoever of any other 

 stratum. 



* Vol. Ixxxi. p. 281. f Geological Transactions, 1st Series, vol. v. p. 539. 



j I shall here insert the whole passage, as the best mode of presenting the facts to the reader. 

 Mr. Barker, writing at Lynden, near Uppingham in Rutlandshire, says : " I did not know till lately 

 " that we had any chalk nearer us than Moddingley " — (see PI. X. a. No. 22.) ; " but several years 

 " ago the people of Riddlington in Rutland, digging for stone to mend the roads, met with a bed of 

 " chalk, at which they were much surprised, and did not know what it was, never having seen a 

 " chalk-pit before. After I had heard of it, I went to examine the place, and found a regular chalk 

 *' pit, with rows of flints lying in it as they are wont to do in England. The chalk is not soft, like 

 " that they write with, but very much like that they dig about Baldock: nor are the flints so black 

 " as those in the South of England, but veined, of a light-coloured flint, and white ; some parts 

 " much mixed with chalk, and are broken, not whole ones. They may have dug the pit six yards 

 " long and two deep, but how far the chalk reaches I do not know." Mr. Barker adds, that he had 

 seen a little patch of chalk a few yards long, in a bank by the road side, along the turnpike road near 

 Stukely, about three miles north-west of Huntingdon, which place is about twenty miles from the 

 nearest chalk-hills. 



