1 15. FOSSIL VEGETABLES. 317 



The organic remains of the cretaceous system already 

 known, amount to many hundred species. The most 

 striking zoological character, is the abundance of echi- 

 nites, belemnites, and ammonites : the latter are the shells 

 of an extinct race of cephalopoda, that appears for 

 the last time in the chalk ; no traces of the existence 

 of a single speeies having been discovered in the tertiary, or 

 any newer formations. My collection, consisting of many 

 thousand fossils from the chalk of England and America, 

 displays the usual genera and species of zoophytes, corals, 

 shells, echinites, star-fish, crinoidea, Crustacea, fishes, and 

 reptiles ; together with many that are exceedingly rare, 

 and some unique. I will illustrate this subject by a selec- 

 tion of a few examples.* 



15. Fossil vegetables. — The marine flora of the chalk, 

 as I have already remarked, offers but little variety : a few 

 species of Fuci, and Conferva, are the only instances that 

 have come under my notice. One species of Fucus, 

 (Fucoides Targionii, Lign. 57,) abounds in the malm rock 

 of Western Sussex, particularly at Bignor, formerly the 

 seat of my late friend, John Hawkins, Esq. ; almost 

 every fragment of the rock is marked with its meandering 

 forms. Conferva are occasionally found in the flints, and 

 very rarely in the chalk. J Plants allied to Zoster a occur 

 in the chalk of the Isle d'Aix. Drifted wood abounds in 

 the line of junction between the gait and greensand. In 

 the Kentish rag, near Maidstone, there have been discovered 



* I would refer the reader to my Medals of Creation, for details of 

 the most important organic remains of the chalk ; and to Mr. Morris's 

 catalogue of British fossils, for lists and references of all the published 

 species. Figures and descriptions of British chalk fossils are given in 

 my Fossils of the South Downs. Wonders of Geology, and Geology of 

 the South-East of England ; in Mr. Sowerby s Mineral Conchology, 

 Mr. Lyell's Elements of Geology, and Parkinson's Organic Eemains of 

 a Former World. 



f Confervites Woochcardii ; Medals of Creation, vol. i. p. 104. 



