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other depositions, I found that each layer was the deposit of 
one shower, and in proportion to the quantity or time of 
each succeeding rain did the thickness of the deposit 
depend ; each layer is one flood, a time intervening when the 
sand was all accumulated at the bottom, and the water had 
smoothed its surface by a very gentle action, so that the 
smoothed bed would not allow of the next flood's deposit 
to mix, hence the sure illustration of the much-vexed 
question of cleavage where heat or oblique pressure have 
not disturbed the original deposition. It may be as thin 
as paper, or one inch thick for roofing slate, or two or 
three inches thick (which is the Yorkshire flag), or an 
uninterrupted deposition of ages, when it becomes the 
cutting stone or ashlar, a number of square yards in 
one mass without any cleavage. It is, perhaps, not all 
speculation to say, that this Yorkshire flag is but the 
pond on a larger scale, and the deposition of some ancient 
estuary, whose waters washed the finer particles of the car- 
boniferous sandstone from the Halifax and Todmorden dis- 
tricts; but the deposition must have taken place, if not in 
deep water, certainly in still water, for the smallest, yea, the 
faintest breeze of wind caused the ripple-marks, as thousands 
of the freestone show, in the strata overlying the flag forma- 
tion, and one strata must have been formed in shallow 
water, and at times completely dry, as there are hundreds of 
acres which bear impressions of rain, or hail drops having 
impinged upon the strata, in process of formation. There 
are great quantities of the tracks and depositions of 
a species of annelide, or, as we locally term them, 
the earthworm. We have this deposition taking place 
from the annelides even now. It is a formation ex- 
tremely barren of animal remains ; the quarrymen adhere 
doggedly to the opinion of a live toad being found 
occasionally entombed in the rock. I have not yet 
