AND STRUCTURE OF THE BELEMNITE. 417 



among it. Then follow the other operations of Hutton ; the 

 transference of the strata from the bottom of the sea to the 

 surface of the dry land, which, we have already shown, is the 

 only hypothesis at all reconcileable to the high inclination of 

 the chalk strata. It may be asked, if this chalk had undergone 

 a degree of heat capable of fusing it, what has become of the 

 crystallisation that must have followed that operation ? for, ex- 

 cepting in the cavities of the flint, where we sometimes disco- 

 ver some small crystallisations of quartz, and occasionally in 

 the limestone, a few cotemporaneous veins of calcareous-spar, 

 neither the flint, nor the limestone they rest in, present any 

 trace of crystalline arrangement ; the texture is homogeneous 

 throughout, and, in general, extremely uniform. But we have 

 many such anomalies in nature ; the base of many of the trap- 

 rocks presents as little the appearance of crystallisation as even 

 the softest chalk, and yet it is now admitted, even by the pu- 

 pils of the Freyberg School, to be of igneous formation ; and 

 the circumstance which Sir H. Englefield mentions, of the 

 flints being sometimes found maintaining externally their 

 usual shape, but being, in reality, sometimes reduced to an ab- 

 solute impalpable powder in situ, which he attributes to the 

 severe concussion which altered the position of the chalk stra- 

 ta, we might adduce as an argument for this rapid cooling ; 

 for to what does his description of these crushed flints more 

 nearly assimilate itself than to the state of unannealed glass ? 



Nor does this idea of fusion oppose itself to the theory of 

 Professor Buckland. I will still concede the possibility of an 

 organic origin to flint ; but I will suppose it to have been a 

 marine organisation, and that the objects, like my fossils, had 

 been embarrassed in the seam of siliceous deposition, and be- 

 ing probably charged with siliceous sand, the silex has formed 

 round them,* as nuclei, and, in the progress of assuming their 



3 g 2 new 



