CiEOLOGV OF FOLKESTONE — THE GAULT. 123 
greenish-yellow mouldering cliff extends from hence towards the 
Harbour ; great pouts and heaps of shattered clay, outslips of the 
narrowing wedge-shaped seam of gault above, line the cliff ; while 
forests of dank olive sea-weeds hang Ump like drooping fringes over 
ledges of rough massive rock and jutting ridges of the stony seams 
as they outcrop tlirough the clattering shingle, over which the foam- 
ing waves, spurting and hissing in the cavities and caves formed by 
the piled rocks, spatter their seething spray for the keen sea-breeze 
to scatter like diamond drops of dew on all the damp and clammy 
objects around. 
On the Lower Greensand we do not purpose here to dwell, except 
to say that although from the hardness and compactness of the stone- 
beds, the incoherent state of the sands, and the general friableness of 
the shells, its fossils can only be obtained in a fragmentary state. 
They are, however, highly interesting ; and any geologist who 
wants work to do may usefully employ himself in making out the 
stratigraphical details and zones of characteristic fossils in the strata 
of the uppermost division which ranges along the cliff from Copt 
Point to the Harbour, and is continued to the westward of Folke- 
stone in the beautiful rugged cUff that scarps the high level grassy 
platform of the Lees, on which the new and handsomest part of the 
town of Folkestone is built. 
In such researches the smallest fragment of a shell or bone, or any 
other fossils, has its proper value, — I never want to teach people 
to look for pretty or fine things, but by God's blessing to do useful 
work, — in obtaining efficient results, which should be carefully com- 
pared with the stratigraphical range of the like fossils in the lower 
greensand deposits on the Continent and elsewhere ; the chief value 
of such an inquiry being to determine the relations in time of the 
various portions of the greensand formation with each other, or their 
synchronism with certain portions of other Cretaceous beds in differ- 
ent localities, and to increase our knowledge of the physical circum- 
stances under which the lowermost members of the Cretaceous 
Formation were accumulated. 
But to return to those fallen heaps of purple gault. Damp and 
wet with the rain and the spray, they are rich harvest-fields for the 
geologist. Split and crack those great unshattered lumps ; cleave 
