Geological facts; or, the crust of the earth, what it is, and what are its usesBarrett, W. G. (William Garland)
Religion
Geological facts; or, the crust of the earth, what it is, and what are its uses
Barrett, W. G. (William Garland)
Geology
Above are some of the most characteristic fossils of the Chalk. No. 1 is
a _pecten_, or oyster, called the “five-ribbed,” or _quinque costatus_;
No. 2 is the _plagiostoma spinosa_, so called on account of its spines,
a shell found frequently in our chalk or lime-pits; No. 3 is the
intermediate hamite (Lat. _hamus_, a hook), “_hamites intermedius_;” No.
4 is the _spatangus cor-anguinum_, a very common fossil _echinus_ in the
chalk; No. 5 is the _ananchytes ovata_, found frequently in the Brighton
and Ramsgate cliffs; No. 6 is a scaphite (Gr. _skaphē_, a skiff or
boat); and the last is our old friend the belemnite, who has survived so
many of this earth’s changes, and now finds himself a contemporary of
the cretaceous inhabitants of the globe.
In many respects, the Chalk presents us with remarkable anomalies: we
have _sand_, the green sand, but unlike in colour and in texture the
sand of the old and new red sandstone, where we find it compressed and
hardened into solid and compact masses of stone; we have _clay_,
argillaceous beds such as the gault, but it is not clay hard and pressed
into slaty rocks, but soft and compressible; and we have _carbonate of
lime_, the chalk constituting the calcareous beds of this formation; but
where we have met with it before it has been hard and solid limestone,
and marble, not pliable and soft as in the Cretaceous system; and yet
apparently it is all the same material as we have found in the earlier
stages of the earth’s crust—the washings, degradations, and deludations
of older and harder rocks, along with the secretions and remains of
organized animals that once peopled this ancient earth; thus affording
us, on a large scale, another illustration of the economy observable in
all the works of God.
[Illustration:
FOSSIL FISH FROM LEWES.
]
Having spoken of the fossil fishes of the Chalk, we here give drawings
of two procured from the neighbourhood of Lewes, the famous fossil
fishing-ground of the late Dr. Mantell; and it is due to the name and
memory of the Chalk historian and geologist, to inform the reader that
Dr. M. was the first who succeeded, by skilful removal of the
surrounding chalk, in procuring a perfect ichthyolite from the
cretaceous formation of England. The British Museum is now enriched by
Dr. Mantell’s collection of fossil fishes, that once so much excited the
admiration of Agassiz, when he saw them at Brighton.
[Illustration:
FOSSIL FISH (ICHTHYOLITE) FROM LEWES.
]
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