A Manual of Elementary Geology: or, The Ancient Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants as Illustrated by Geological MonumentsLyell, Charles, Sir
Science
A Manual of Elementary Geology: or, The Ancient Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants as Illustrated by Geological Monuments
Lyell, Charles, Sir
Geology
The position of the red crag in Essex to the subjacent London clay and
chalk has been already pointed out (fig. 142.). Whenever the two
divisions are met with in the same district, the red crag lies
uppermost; and, in some cases, as in the section represented in fig.
143., it is observed that the older or coralline mass _b_ had suffered
denudation before the newer formation _a_ was thrown down upon it. At D
there is not only a distinct cliff, 8 or 10 feet high, of coralline
crag, running in a direction N.E. and S.W., against which the red crag
abuts with its horizontal layers; but this cliff occasionally overhangs.
The rock composing it is drilled everywhere by _Pholades_, the holes
which they perforated having been afterwards filled with sand and
covered over when the newer beds were thrown down. As the older
formation is shown by its fossils to have accumulated in a deeper sea
(15, and sometimes 25, fathoms deep or more), there must no doubt have
been an upheaval of the sea-bottom before the cliff here alluded to was
shaped out. We may also conclude that so great an amount of denudation
could scarcely take place, in such incoherent materials, without many of
the fossils of the inferior beds becoming mixed up with the overlying
crag, so that considerable difficulty must be occasionally experienced
by the palaeontologist in deciding which species belong severally to each
group. The red crag being formed in a shallower sea, often resembles in
structure a shifting sand bank, its layers being inclined diagonally,
and the planes of stratification being sometimes directed in the same
quarry to the four cardinal points of the compass, as at Butley. That
in this and many other localities, such a structure is not deceptive or
due to any subsequent concretionary re-arrangement of particles, or to
mere lines of colour, is proved by each bed being made up of flat pieces
of shell which lie parallel to the planes of the smaller strata.
Some fossils, which are very abundant in the red crag, have never been
found in the white or coralline division; as, for example, the _Fusus
contrarius_ (fig. 144.), and several species of _Buccinum_ (or _Nassa_)
and _Murex_ (see figs. 145, 146.), which two genera seem wanting in
the lower crag.
[4 Illustrations: Fossils characteristic of the Red Crag.
Fig. 144. _Fusus contrarius._
Fig. 145. _Murex alveolatus._
Fig. 146. _Nassa granulata._
Fig. 147. _Cypraea coccinelloides._
Fig. 144. half nat. size; the others nat. size.]
Among the bones and teeth of fishes are those of large sharks
(_Carcharias_), and a gigantic skate of the extinct genus _Myliobates_, and
many other forms, some common to our seas, and many foreign to them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account