92 



Fossil Bones and Pseudo-Coprolites of the Crag. 



fessor Buckland now recognises them bj the name of pseudo or 

 false coprolites, as he does not conceive them to be of truly ani- 

 mal origin, but considers them merely as calcareous pebbles 

 which have undergone a peculiar metamorphosis and become im- 

 pregnated with phosphoric matter by long-continued contact with 

 decaying animal and vegetable substances. Such phosphoric 

 nodules, however, it must be recollected, contain a large propor- 

 tion of phosphate of lime and other earthy phosphates, as will be 

 presently shown, and consequently are far from being useless for 

 agricultural purposes. In fact, as will be hereafter pointed out, 

 they contain almost as large a proportion of these fertilizing in- 

 gredients as the bones with which they are associated, and are 

 actually superior in this respect to the true coprolites which are 

 met with in Dorsetshire and other counties. The bones them- 

 selves, as I have before observed, generally occur in a broken or 

 fractured state, and evidently belonged for the most part to those 

 rapacious monsters the sharks and gigantic sea-lizards and whales 

 {Enaliosauri and Ceteosauri), which at one period of our earth's 

 history must have existed in such myriads in our oceans and seas. 



Still more recently, it has been discovered, that somewhat 

 similar phosphoric deposits occur in the lower strata of the cre- 

 taceous system ; that is to say, in the upper and lower green-sand 

 formations which lie below the chalk: and in an excellent paper 

 which appeared in a recent Number of the Journal of the Royal 

 Agricultural Society,* Messrs. Paine and Way have directed at- 

 tention to them, pointing out their geological position and the 

 manner in which they may be most economically collected and 

 -applied to the purposes of the agriculturist. It is not my inten- 

 tion, however, in this communication, to treat of the fossils of the 

 green-sand — this subject having been already so fully discussed 

 by the above-mentioned gentlemen, leaves nothing to be desired. 

 In the present memoir, therefore, I purpose to confine myself 

 almost entirely to the details of my analyses of the fossil bones 

 and pseudo-coprolites of the crag — to the consideration of those 

 remains which are met with in such enormous quantities on the 

 coasts of Suffolk, Norfolk, and Essex, where several hundreds of 

 persons are now actively employed in exhuming and collecting 

 them, with the view to their future conversion into artificial 

 manures. It is from these counties, indeed, that Mr. Lawes, of 

 Rothamstead, obtains nearly the whole of the material he em- 

 ploys in the preparation of his well known " coprolite manure 

 and so extensive is the demand for this description of fertilizers 

 for wheat and turnip-growing lands, I am credibly informed, that 

 several thousands of tons of fossil bones, &c., are annually sold in 



* Vol. IX. Part I. p. 56. 



