Be Ranee — On the Albian, or Gault of Folkestone. 165 



around fragments of broken ammonites, sometimes filling up empty 

 cavities, and in few cases enclosing small quartz pebbles. Taking 

 all these facts into consideration, it appears probable that these 

 phosphatic nodules are the molluskite and other animal remains of 

 the recurrent forms which existed in another area during the time 

 occupied by the deposition of the intervening strata. 



The Lower Neocomian is exposed at low water on the beach 

 between Sandgate and Hythe, and is reached in well-borings at 

 both towns ; the zone of BhjncJionella sulcata is to be seen near 

 the turnpike between Folkestone and Sandgate, on the Lower 

 Sandgate Koad; the Middle Aptian beds at this point are over- 

 laid by a recent deposit, two to three feet thick, which con- 

 tains the empty shells of the recent species Cyclostoma elegans, 

 a shell, peculiar to chalk districts, only now met with living, 

 two miles further east, on the chalk of the undercliff at Eastweir 

 Bay. The Upper Aptian sands, with its seams of rag and sandy 

 ironstone, form the cliff above. The junction bed xi, is first seen 

 in the cliff, at a point immediately over the before-named turnpike. 

 Under the junction bed, at the top of the Upper Aptian, there is a 

 highly fossiliferous bed (the zone of Ammonites mammillaris, Am. 

 Beudantii, and Inoceramus Salomoni). This zone, which contains 

 many Aptian forms, is succeeeded hj a seam of sulphuret of iron 

 nodules, with crystals of selenite, and occasionally wood, bored by 

 GastrochcBna pyriformis ; this seam is a portion of the junction 

 bed XI., and is the real base of the Gault Clay, or Albian stage. ^ 



LOWEK ALBIAN. 



Zone of Am7nonites interruptus. Bed xi. — This zone consists of 

 three portions, the iron seam, before alluded to; a seam of dark 

 green sand, containing two lines of phosphatic nodules ; and a band 

 of dark marly gault, with one line of nodules ; the nodules in each 

 case being mixed with fragments of A7n. interruptus and Am. dentatus. 

 The first portion is generally about a foot in thickness, the second 

 from eighteen inches to four feet thick, the third from one to three 

 feet. This zone is well shown in the cliff section, from its first 

 appearance above the turnpike, before-mentioned, to the point in 

 which it sinks below the beach, a little east of Copt Point. At the 

 eastern corner of the west cliff, at the Battery, it is cut into and 

 redeposited with the local '* Elephant " bed existing at that point, of 

 which the following is a section taken by the writer of this paper 

 in 1866 :— 



1. Vegetable mould 3 feet 3 inches. 



2. Eag flagstones of Old Monastery „ 3 „ 



3. Clay, with oysters, bones of Ox, etc 2 „ 6 „ 



4. Small shingle „ 4 „ 



5. "White loam, with Helix concinna, Succinea ohlonga. Lower ] 



Chalk. Terebratula, and " junction bed." Ammonites and > 6 „ 4 „ 

 nodules ) 



6. Angular flints, with bones of mammalia, and fragments of | , 



Am. interruptus 

 7. Upper Aptian 95 ,, „ 



1 For the particulars of the distribution of the Aptian beds, see Mr. Drew in Geol. 

 Survey, Memoir on sheet iv. 



