CHALK FLINTS IN CENTRAL COUNTIES. 197 
are composed of the wreck of rocks of the most distant ages, and 
which exist in their native state only in distant quarters of the island. 
Flints from the chalk formation, accompanied by rounded masses of 
hard chalk, and fragments of the different oolite rocks, seem, how¬ 
ever, decidedly predominant in Leicestershire ; and next to these in 
quantity are the granular quartz rock pebbles, resembling those from 
the Lickey, with others of white quartz, and dark coloured hard 
flinty slate. It would, however, be not difficult in many places, as 
for instance on the west of Market Harborough, and in the Valley of 
Shipston-on-Stour, to form almost a complete geological series of 
English rocks from among these rounded fragments, which often 
occur in boulders of very considerable size. 
“ The immense quantities of chalk flints which are scattered in 
this gravel at such a distance from the present limits of the chalk, 
seem decisively to indicate that this formation once occupied a much 
wider space than it does at present. A remarkable example of this 
kind may be seen near Northampton, in the gravel used for roads in 
Earl Spencer’s Park at Althorp, which is dug in the adjoining parish 
of Great Brington, and in which there is a large proportion of chalk 
flints. Near Sywell also, six miles north-east of Northampton, on 
the oolite formation, there are some fields as thickly strewed over 
with fragments of pure white chalk, as the surface of stony arable 
land is usually with the substance of the subjacent rock. And in the 
south of Derbyshire, chalk flints are commonly found dispersed over 
the surface of the country.” 
The accumulations of gravel on the low grounds along the valley 
of Buckingham and Bedford are principally composed of fragments 
