16 
THE CRETACEOUS kOCKS OF BRITAIN 
fragments of brown phosphate are frequently scattered through 
the stone. Fossils are generally fairly abundant in it, especially 
Rhynchonella mantelliana, Kingena lima , Pecten orbicularis, 
Pecten fissicosta, and Serpula umbonata. 
The Totternhoe Stone does not exist in the southern counties, 
and has not yet been discovered in Wiltshire. It appears to set in 
as a thin bed in Berkshire, continues thence through Oxford and 
Bucks, swells out to its greatest thickness (15 or 20 feet) in the 
counties of Bedford, Hertford, and Cambridge, and thins again 
through Suffolk and Norfolk, till it is only 2 feet thick at Hunstan¬ 
ton. At that place it is a hard dark-grey, gritty-feeling stone, with 
the usual nodules at the base. * * * § In this form it occurs throughout 
Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, where it was first identified by Mr. 
W. Hill in 1888,| its recognition there having been made feasible 
by the discovery of its existence at Hunstanton in 1886. 
Grey Chalk is another name which has been used for a portion of 
the Lower Chalk. William Phillips (in 1818) seems to have been 
the first to have employed this as a name for a definite subdivision, 
and he applied it to all the greyer part of the Lower Chalk near Dover, 
down to its base, estimating the thickness of such “ Grey Chalk ” 
at 200 feet (see ante , p. 3). Phillips’s account was reprinted 
in Conybeare and Phillips’s Geology (1822), and on page 104 there 
is a note that “ this bed of grey chalk might more properly be 
designated chalk marie,” showing that they regarded them as 
synonymous terms. 
Most subsequent writers preferred to use the name Chalk Marl 
for this and the equivalent beds elsewhere, and the latter name was 
eventually adopted in the Memoirs of the Geological Survey. It is 
important to remember, however, that up to 1877 no definite dis¬ 
tinction existed between Chalk Marl and Grey Chalk, and that 
fossils recorded as obtained from the “Grey Chalk of Folkestone ”J 
might equally well have been described as coming from the Chalk 
Marl. Mr. Whitaker testifies to the identity of the two things in 
his “ Geology of the London Basin,” p. 32 (1872). 
Mr. F. G. H. Price, however, writing in 1877,§ proposed to restrict 
the name Chalk Marl to the very lowest part, and to use the term 
Grey Chalk for all the rest of the Lower Chalk ; thus including 
though apparently he did not realise the fact, 50 feet of Phillips’s 
“ Chalk without flints.” Following Mr. Price, we have in several 
different publications employed the name Grey Chalk in a similar 
way, applying it to all the beds which lie between the Totternhoe 
Stone and the marl with Actinocamax plenus. 
This use of the name has not proved satisfactory, for the highest 
part of the Lower Chalk is always so nearly white that it cannot 
with accuracy be called grey, and this white or whitish chalk is 
sometimes 60 and even 80 feet thick. 
* See Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., 1887, Vol. xliii. p. 561. 
t See Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., 1888, Vol. xliv. p. 325. 
X e.g. In Dr. Wright’s Monograph of the Echinoderms of the Cretaceous 
Formations, Palaeontographical Society. 
§ See Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., Vol. xxxiii. p. 431. 
