GRAVESEND. 423 



where there are many lime-kilns, kalkllgnar, the per- 

 pendicular walls are, from the quantity of coal-smoke, 

 nearly black. In some places where the chalk had newly 

 fallen down, it was full of black specks, the size of a small 

 pin's head, just like as if a Lichen had begun [T. II. p. 

 70] to grow there. In one piece and another were large 

 rust spots, which in some places ate into it to some 

 extent. 



The perpendicular sides or walls of the chalk-pits are 

 commonly full of fissures, springor, which go some- 

 times perpendicularly, sometimes horizontally, and cross 

 each other at right angles. The width of such a fissure 

 is not always the same, being sometimes so narrow that 

 one can scarcely thrust in the blade of a knife, but some- 

 times they are wider, that one can easily get in a finger. 

 I cannot just say of which kind, perpendicular or horizon- 

 tal, there occur most, yet the horizontal seem to be the 

 most numerous. When I call the fissures perpendicular, 

 it is not to be understood that they were so according to 

 mathematical rules, but they stood sometimes exactly 

 perpendicular, sometimes nearly so. The same remark 

 applies to the word horizontal. 



In the old chalk pits they had in some places dug 

 large holes like caves, hvalf. Those who lived close by 

 said that they thought they had been in former times 

 used as cellars, kallare. The cave within had not taken 

 any particular injury from time, nor had the walls ; yet it 

 seemed that pieces of chalk had from time to time fallen 

 down from the roof. The chalk in these old cellar walls , 

 which were perpendicular, was full of fissures which ran 

 both perpendicularly and horizontally, and even obliquely, 

 I mean [T. II. p. 71] by oblique that which is a medium 

 between perpendicular and horizontal, or tolerably near 

 thereto. These oblique fissures were everywhere very 

 few, and not nearly so many as the others. The distance 



