frtfimdsi.] PHOSPHATES 6F ENGLAND. 85 
the south shore of the Wash at St. Edmunds and runs south by south- 
west to Downham Market. Here it becomes covered with alluvium 
and does not appear again for about twenty- three miles, when it crops 
out three miles below Cambridge, on the. Cam. From Cambridge it 
runs in a southwesterly direction through the couuties of Cambridge, 
Bedford, Buckingham, Oxford, Berks, Wilts, and Dorset, and reaches 
the southern coast at Lyme Regis and Sid mouth. On the southern 
coast of Dorsetshire there are numerous outcrops of Upper Greensand, 
as well as on the Isle of Wight. In the southeast of England there 
is also a very considerable Greensand outcrop. It commences near 
Beachy Head, in Sussex, and runs west by a little north to Petersfield, 
in the east of Hampshire. Here it turns abruptly to the north and runs 
in this direction to Alton and Farnham, in Hampshire and Surrey, re- 
spectively. Thence it takes another abrupt turn to the east, and runs 
in a general easterly direction until it comes to the coast again, at Folke- 
stone in Kent. 
The Lower Greensand is not so continuous as the upper, but it oc- 
curs at intervals along most of the outcrops mentioned above, and in 
Sussex and Kent it is the uninterrupted accompaniment of the Upper 
Greensand. In Yorkshire it runs from Flamborough Head west for about 
fifteen miles. It crops out again with the Upper Greensand about three 
miles south of Barton and rnns continuously to Burgh. Again it crops 
out near Cambridge, and extends thence to Buzzard in Bedford. From 
there on, in a southwest direction, it occurs in small outcrops along the 
line of the Upper Greensand In the Isle of Wight there are large 
outcrops of it. This same Greensand belt can be traced across the 
English Channel to the Continent. In the Brunswick and Hartz dis- 
tricts, at Goslar, Schoeppenstedt, and Salzgitter, the same nodules and 
shell casts are found as in the Lower Greensand in Cambridgeshire and 
Bedfordshire. But, though the belt is thus seen to have a very wide 
extent, the conditions which are necessary for the profitable working 
of a phosphate deposit are so many and so rarely satisfied that the phos- 
phatic beds have been mined in very few places throughout this many 
hundred miles of outcrop. On the Continent the bed has been worked 
to no considerable extent. 
The relative positions of the Upper and Lower Greensand formations 
is best shown by a section. The following one is given by Messrs. 
Paine and Way. 1 
The Cretaceous formation of England is divided into the Chalk and 
the Greensand. These again are subdivided as follows : 
( 1. Soft, white chalk with flints. 
Chalk - < 2. Hard, white chalk with few or uo flints. 
( 3. Glial k marl. 
{1. Upper Greensand and firestone rock. 
2. Gault, or blue marl. 
3. Lower Greensand, made of iron sand and 
occasional limestone beds. 
1 Jour. Royal Agric. Soc, vol. 9, 1848. 
(559) 
