496 Note on a curious Sandstone formation at Sasseram. [No. 163. 



mately joined by some great pressure as to resemble columns ; the 

 pressure that has brought them into contact, whether from below, above, 

 or laterally, has caused them to be much flattened on every side, so 

 much so that they resemble square columns, varying from two to twenty 

 feet in length ; but on a closer inspection, the joint of each separate 

 sphere may be traced on the side of the exposed column. 



The bed, as far as exposed, Fig. No. 2, is about twelve feet in height, the 

 top row of stones generally being nearly perfect circles, of about three 

 feet diameter, the centre ones elliptical, and the lower part of the bed is 

 composed of a series of layers of much flattened spheres, varying from 

 ten to two inches in diameter ; and although crushed into so small a 

 space, each individual stratum, however fine or thread-like in its struc- 

 ture, is perfectly preserved and wojiexhibited. 



In Fig. 3, where with the aid of steel wedges I managed to burst open 

 a sphere, the fracture has taken place in the middle of a thin red gravel- 

 like stratum of about one-eighth of an inch in thickness, and not through 

 the whole strata or concentric coats, but leaving a corresponding hollow, 

 from whence the globe containing the smaller strata and nucleus has 

 started : upon chiselling away the outer surface of the protruding ball, 

 another coloured stratum is discovered. In Fig. 4, a flattened globe 

 presents its central group of strata projecting as a cylindroid ; the frac- 

 ture here, as is generally the case, has occurred at one of the gravel-red 

 strata, of which nature are all the delicately pencilled concentric rings 

 noticeable on the fractured surfaces of Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 Figs. The 

 intermediate strata are composed of fine white arenaceous particles, in- 

 termixed with red, black, and brown particles of the same nature. The 

 red lines, which in some specimens are almost invisible from their ex- 

 treme fineness, are evidently tinged with the oxide of iron, traces of 

 which are also visible on the outer coating of the globes. Some of these 

 globes, flattened out to an immense size, I have calculated must have 

 been six feet in diameter when perfectly spherical, with many hundred 

 concentric strata, though not all perfect, some running into and crossing 

 each other in great confusion ; but the generality of the well developed 

 strata are perfect. 



It is difficult to imagine how such a series of not only concentric 

 lines, but concentric spheres, similar in arrangement to the coats of a 

 bulbous root, could ever have been formed upon so grand a scale, for 



