HARD WICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



189 



hidden to discharge the functions of ordinary leaves. 

 What their use can be, I cannot guess ; and if they 

 are simply modified or degenerate stamens, their 

 position is notable, since it is amongst the outside 

 stamens one is accustomed to find such, as in the 

 peony, rose, water-lily, etc. I should be grateful if 

 any reader of Science-Gossip could throw some 

 light on this subject. — H. St. A. Alder, Gt. Malvern. 



GEOLOGY. 



The Relation of Geology to Archeology. 

 — At the Annual Summer Excursion of the Suffolk 

 Institute of Archaeology and Natural History, Dr. 

 J. E. Taylor, Ed. " S.-G." (hon. member), delivered 

 an address on this interesting and original subject, 

 dealing chiefly with the churches of Suffolk and 

 Norfolk. He pointed out that in the Australian 

 colonies we might see the evolution of church archi- 

 tecture condensed into little more than a quarter of a 

 century, just as a red deer annually reproduced in the 

 increasing number of its tines the evolution of its race. 

 In an Australian bush-town the first church would 

 be built of wood, as was the case with nearly all 

 the Saxon churches in this country. In a few years 

 it would have a roof of corrugated iron, then would 

 come the stone period, replacing the original structure, 

 and perhaps on the identical spot, owing to its having 

 been consecrated. Our early churches up to shortly 

 before the Norman period were built chiefly of wood. 

 England was a forest-clad country, and wood must 

 have been the chief quarry, except in freestone and 

 limestone districts. Although East Anglia was one 

 of the early settled districts, there must have been 

 considerable difficulty in conveying large quantities 

 of stone inland. Hence we find that in the districts 

 of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, where the sub-soils 

 were boulder clay, the stones for church building 

 were collected on the spot, turned up by the plough 

 or picked off the ground. The external form of 

 tower, into which they could be most easily worked, 

 would be a round tower, and there were more round 

 tower churches in Suffolk and Norfolk than all the 

 rest of England put together. A modification of 

 these occurred later on, when the upper part was 

 made octagonal, each angle being strengthened by 

 freestone. The highly artistic stone-work of the 

 later Norman period, as well as that of the Early 

 English and Decorated styles, were possible, because 

 the Oolitic limestone used for that purpose was 

 worked almost as easily as cheese, when freshly 

 quarried. This was brought over chiefly from Caen, 

 in Normandy, for use in the eastern parts of East 

 Anglia. Further west we got more Barnack stone, 

 from the village of that name, in Northamptonshire. 

 The Abbey of Bury St. Edmund's, which was origin- 

 ally a huge wooden structure, was rebuilt chiefly of 

 this stone, King William foregoing his tolls on this 



occasion. It was singular how certain kinds of 

 stone had come to be used for special church-work. 

 Thus the fonts, altar slabs, etc., were frequently 

 formed of Purbeck marble, a fresh-water limestone, 

 crowded with fossil shells, only found at Purbeck. 

 During that great church-building epoch, known as 

 the Perpendicular period, the outlying buttresses, 

 clerestoried windows, and other elaborate work 

 demanded a greater use of Oolitic freestone, and this 

 was probably the reason that at the time it was most 

 abundantly used. The later Perpendicular and 

 Decorated churches in districts where the black flints 

 could be obtained directly from the chalk allowed 

 of those flints being faced and squared, and this led 

 to the lovely flint and panel-work seen at its best 

 perfection at Norwich, both in ecclesiastical, muni- 

 cipal, and other buildings. It would have been 

 impossible for the shattered flints obtained from the 

 boulder clay, where they had originally been deposited 

 by ice-action, to have been worked in this manner. 

 Accordingly we find the latter used in all churches 

 down to the Tudor period, just as they were found, so 

 that our East Anglian churches were capital geological 

 museums, containing stones, chiefly flint, from all 

 the geological formations between here and, Scotland. 

 The early Romans availed themselves of those masses 

 of argillaceous carbonate of lime, which occur in the 

 London clay and are know as Septaria. The Roman 

 wall at Colchester is built chiefly of them, so is the 

 Keep at Orford Castle, and many of the high-towered 

 churches along the Suffolk and Essex coast have this 

 stone in their , composition, especially when the 

 London clay happens to crop out in the district. 

 These Septarian stones are common along the south- 

 ern parts of the Suffolk coast. The West Rocks off 

 Harwich are formed of them. Dr. Taylor also re- 

 ferred to the Carstone churches in West Norfolk, 

 and to the hard Coraline limestone which only 

 occurs in the neighbourhood of Orford, which must 

 have affected church architecture ; and how hard put 

 to it the church builders must have been, in a district 

 where no natural quarries are found, to obtain the 

 materials wherewith to build the grey old churches of 

 our towns and villages, of which East Anglia can 

 boast to possess the most splendid and well pre- 

 served. 



The Red Mountains of Sutherland. — On 

 perusing one of the scientific journals for this month, 

 a very satisfactory bit of information was learnt by me 

 for the first time. It seems that in No. 297 of 

 Science-Gossip (September 18S9), in the course of 

 an article on the geology of Sutherland, I suggested 

 the idea that the so-called Cambrian rocks of that 

 county were really of igneous or volcanic origin, i.e. 

 that they occupied a lower position than the Cambrian 

 formation which is supposed (I believe wrongly) to 

 be composed of metamorphosed marine sediments. 

 Now it is a fact that the officers of H.M. Geological 



