A similar clay, which is used for making gallipots, is dug from the banks of the Medway. A line, light ash-coloured, nearly white clay, which is employed, in pottery-works, is also dug at Cheam near Epsom in Surry.
The upper of flinty chalk, which is the next older stratum, is extremely thick, forming stupendous cliffs upwards of six hundred and fifty feet high, on the south-eastern coasts of the island. It extends nearly through almost all that part of the island which lies south of a line supposed to be drawn from Dorchester in the County of Dorset to Flarnborough-head in Yorkshire.
In this stratum there is a great quantity of flint, chiefly in irregularly formed nodules, disposed in layers, which preserve at parallelism with each other and with continuous seams of flint, sometimes not exceeding half an inch in thickness. The chalk contains a fine sand, which may be separated by washing.[1]
The fossils of this stratum are for the most part peculiar to it; very few of them being found in any other. They also appear to agree very closely with those species found in the chalk of France, by Messrs. De France, Cuvier and Brongniart. The number of fossils noticed by these gentlemen amounts to fifty; but they have as yet only particularised a part of them. These are here compared with what appear to be the correspondent fossils in the English part of this stratum; and some others are also pointed out, which these gentlemen have not yet mentioned as being found in the neighbourhood of Paris.
In the French stratum there occur,
Two Lituolites. No species of this genus is noticed as having
- ↑ The chalk in the neighbourhood of Paris contains according to M. Bouillon La Grange, Magnesia 0,11, and Silex 0,19.
