Chalk and Flint Formation. 27 



lee of a projecting hill-ridge. It might also be 

 expected to assume, when deposited on the land, 

 the gentle undulations as of drifted snow; as is 

 much the case in the downs of chalky regions, 

 which have that gently undulating character. I 

 may mention here also the ancient record of the 

 fall of a meteorolite witnessed by one Eusebius, which 

 is preserved to us by Photius, Patriarch of Constan- 

 tinople, in a fragment of Damascius. It was seen 

 to come rushing down suddenly in a globe of fire, 

 and was immediately after picked up, and from the 

 description given of it — as globular, measuring a 

 span in its mean diameter, whitish in colour, but 

 showing purplish occasionally — it appears to have 

 been a flint. 7 Iron also is well known to have 

 fallen in meteoric masses ; and iron pyrites often 

 occurs in the chalk in peculiar balls of a concentri- 

 cally radiated fibrous construction, which would 

 seem to require free space for their formation by the 

 electric and molecular attraction of particles. 8 Baron 



7 2<£aipai/ Se 7rvpo<: v\j/o)6ev KaraOopova-av i£ai<pvr)s iSeiv .... 

 amov Se eVi rrfv <r<$>aipav Spajxetv rjSrj tov 7rvpo<; onrro(r(3€vvvjji€vov, /cat 

 KaraAa/Jetv avrrjv ovcrav ttjv (SatTvXov. 2</>aipa jx\v aKpifirjs irvy- 

 Xavev o)v v7ro\evKos Se xpth/xa, <jTnda}xaia Se tt/jv Sta/xerpoi/ Kara /xeye^os, 

 6.XX evtore jau&v eytvero /cat eAarroDV, kou 7rop<^vpo€iSr]<s aWore. 

 This stone, as well as some others of the same nature, was treated 

 with superstitious veneration and consulted as an oracle, abetted 

 by priestly fraud and fables. " Photii Myriobiblon," pp. 1062, 

 1063. Ed. fol. Genevse, 1612. Bochart. Phaleg. c. 707. 



8 There are occasionally vegetable remains and even small 

 animal bones found converted into pyrites, as if by aqueous infil- 

 tration. Branches of trees so converted into, sulphide of iron are 

 found occasionally in a bank with a sandy stratum, beside the 

 landslip, or Warren, near Folkestone, or washed up by the sea 

 there. But these do not present a parallel case. It seems hard 

 to conceive how the aggregation of detached balls of crystallized 

 fibres radiating to all sides from a common centre, could be formed 

 without inequality or compression, otherwise than in free space ; 



