10 



ON THE RED CHALK OP ENGLAND. 



by a broad band of paint. The same observation will hold good with 

 respect to the others. 



It will readily be understood that when the sun shines upon the 

 cliff, and lights up the bright white, the bright red, the pale yellow, 

 and the dark brown and black, and casts a shadow over the mass of 

 gaily tinted materials at the base, a picture is produced not easy to 

 be surpassed in beauty, and certainly not to be fully appreciated unless 

 it be actually seen. 



The bed of White Chalk above the Red is, at Hunstanton, very fos- 

 siliferous ; though rendered somewhat useless, like that of Yorkshire, 

 to the geologist, from its extreme hardness. Amongst other shells, 

 may be mentioned several kinds of serpulse, belemnites, and ammo- 

 nites. These last are occasionally very large : when I was at Hun- 

 stanton, in the autumn, I found an example two feet in diameter ; 

 with great difficulty I extricated it from its matrix, breaking it in half 

 during the operation • and, finally, had the- mortification of discovering 

 that its weight was so great I could not carry it away. 



The Red Chalk beneath, which is nearly four feet in thickness, is 

 very full of fossils : belemnites, serpulee, terebratulee, corals, and many 

 others, not to mention bones. The number of specimens on the table 

 will testify to its richness in organic remains. 



Sometimes it is soft and crumbling ; but, generally speaking, it is 

 very hard, gritty, of a bright red shade, and full of small dark-coloured 

 siliceous pebbles ; in this respect differing considerably from the Red 

 Chalk of Speeton — in which I have not seen pebbles. Professor 

 Tennant, who has examined the Hunstanton pebbles, informs me that 

 they consist of chalcedony, quartz, flint, slate, and brovm sjmr or car- 

 bonate of iron. 



It also contains a great quantity of fragments of inocerami, and a 

 curious ramifying sponge-like structure (there is one on the table), 

 which also occurs in the White Chalk above. 



Something very similar to the ramifying sponge is seen on the sur- 

 face of blocks on the sea-shore at the back of the Isle of Wight in the 

 greensand formation, and one very like it on the calcareous grit of the 

 Yorkshire shore. You will observe these last to the north of Filey, 

 but nothing of the same appearance exists in the White Chalk at 

 Speeton. 



