NOTES AND QUERIES. 
161 
ferruginous, argillaceous, calcareous, or siliceous. On the third point we request 
infoniiatiou from the secretaries and members of such institutions. 
W. S. ( Bristol). — ''Sir, — Can you give me any information in the next number of 
the Geologist as to the fossil remains called Palates — are they the teeth, or 
are they any other parts of mammals, lishes, or reptiles ? I have consulted various 
books, but in none of them can I find any reference to them. I have collected 
up to the present time, in this neighbourhood, about twenty different kinds, and 
should much like to know in what work I could find out their designations." — 
The " Palates " alluded to by W. S. are the dental plates — crushing teeth, in fact — 
arming the jaws of certain species of sharks and rays. The fish of the cretaceous 
sea, whose palates are so well known in the chalk, have their nearest living re- 
presentative in the Ccstracion of Port Jackson (Australia). The palates from 
Bracklesham Bay have their representatives in the Eagle-rays of our present 
seas. We shall shortly print, in our gems of private collections, a more ample 
notice of these remains. Agassiz's great work, the " Poissons Fossiles," is the 
great authority for fish remains ; but its price necessarily renders it a scarce work. 
W. S. will find notices of these fish palates in Mantell's " Wonders," and Lyell's 
" Manual of Geology." 
H. W. (Bury St. Edmunds). — " I should be much obliged if you or any of your 
correspondents could inform me of the probable cause of the occurrence of thick 
veins of sand that are found penetrating, or rather filling up deep cylindrical 
holes in, the chalk, often to the depth of thirty feet or more ; they are called by 
the quarrymen ' sand golfs, or gulfs.' We are in this neighbourhood upon the 
upper chalk formation, with regular layers of flints (horizontal), and the chalk of 
a moderate hardness." — When the chalk and the Tertiary deposits lay level pre- 
vious to the upheaval of the Wealdcn dome, the drainage water of the Tertiaries 
could only pass oft' by filtering down perpendicularly through the chalk. The 
water thus filtering downwards is considered to have been impregnated with 
acidulous gas, and by this means to have acted with energy on calciferous 
rocks in dissolving out these pipe-like cavities, into which, as by this action 
they were constantly being deepened, the superincumbent tertiary sands 
and clay gradually sank. But after the lifting up of the Wealden area the 
surface waters went off' by the slopes of the higher ground into the lateral 
valleys. In Dorsetshire and Wiltshire these beds are still horizontal, and in the 
large districts of Bagshot Sand, yet remaining in situ, many " swallow-holes " 
or cavities occur, in which streams or water-courses suddenly disappear. Such 
is the commonly received notion of the sand-gulfs H. W. alludes to, which are 
more generally known as sand-pipes. Mr. Prestwich follows Sir Charles Lyell 
and others in considering these pipes to be the effects of water, charged with car- 
bonic acid giis ; and there are some excellent papers on the subject by that gentle- 
man in the Tenth 'Volume of the " Geological Journal," p. 222 and p. 241, and in 
the Eleventh Volume, p. G4. The late Mr. Trimmer considered these sand-pipes as 
due to the waves of the sea, in producing a vorticose action of pebbles and sand at 
the termination of long furrows in the surface of the chalk, by which these long 
cylindrical or conical cavities were " wormed " out, as it were, by a kind of natural 
auger or drilling machine. Mr. Trimmer's papers will be found in Vol. X. 
of the " Geological Journal," p. 231, and p. 274. 
R. G. E. justly complains that having written in reply to an advertisement 
in our second number, offering an exchange of fossils, he has had his letter re- 
turned through the Dead Letter Office. R. G. E. also offers to exchange crag 
fossils for any specimens from beds below the greensand ; but as the initials are 
the only signature to the note we have received, and London the only address, we 
cannot do more than acknowledge our correspondent's letter, as our readers would 
be in a similar dilemma to himself in any attempt at correspondence or exchange. 
We have learned f rom the late proprietor the name of the advertiser, and can but 
think the return of our correspondent's letter a mere accident. 
A YoukgInqoiree. — "Sir, — Can yougivemean explanation of the extraordinary 
abundance of oxide of iron in the Red Crag of Suffolk, as shown by the deep colour 
of the fossils, and their matrix ? I have been rather puzzled by a curious fossil from 
