Shavp — On a Singular Incrustation, 



563 



bilities for working and realisation. It may turn out eventually as 

 a good place for investment of capital, and I hope may. But this 

 puffing is altogether much too premature. The commencement of 

 Australia and California was very different. The actual nuggets 

 turned up honestly, and spoke for themselves. 



I. — On a Eemakkable Incrustation in Northamptonshire. 

 By Samuel Sharp, F.S.A., F.G.S.i 



A SPECIMEN of a plant incrusted by carbonate of lime having 

 been left at the Northampton Museum (of the Geological 

 Department of which I am the Hon. Curator), I visited the place 

 whence it had been brought — an ancient gravel -pit about three 

 miles from the village of Old or Wold, and some fourteen miles 

 N.N.E. of Northampton. 



The section exposed is about eight feet in height, and the gravel 

 contains broken flints, angular and sub-angular fragments from the 

 Oolitic limestone and ironstone of the district, and rounded pebbles, 

 composed for the most part of materials foreign to the locality, and 

 derived from older gravels or from the Boulder-clay which caps 

 many of the high lands in the county. 



In the section of the gravel, I found the mass of incmsted plants 

 from which the small fragment had been taken. This, as seen in 

 the section, is about ten feet in length, and about two feet six 

 inches in thickness (see Woodcut). Its dimensions inwards were 



JS: >b 



Diagram-section of side of Gravel-pit near Old, Northamptonshire, showing position 

 of ancient tufaceous deposit containing Char a vulgaris. 

 a. Mass of incrusted Chnra vulgaris (24 feet in thickness, and 10 feet in breadth.) 

 6. Stratified gravel (8 feet in thickness). 



c. Lower layer of calcareous paste (6 inches in thickness). 



d. Upper layer of calcareous paste (12 inches in thickness). 



e. Surface soil (9 inches, deepening to ] foot 9 inches). 



not ascertainable, and no trace of it was to be found in the opposite 

 section of the pit, distant some fifteen or twenty feet. It reposes 

 upon six inches of calcareous paste, made up of the decomposed 

 material of the mass, and this, paste again rests upon the gravel 

 as a base. 



1 Bead before the British Association, Section C. Norwich, August, 1868. 



