diffusion of silex in a state of solution; and whatever may have caused its abundance in the waters during the deposition of the upper chalk, there can be little doubt respecting the mode in which it has been collected around the organic remains of these early seas.” At Scratchell’s Bay in the Isle of Wight, it will be seen that the flints are in a vertical position; and to the most casual observer the perpendicular arrangement of these flints will supply the strongest evidence of disturbance by upheaval from below. The bay in front, called Scratchell’s Bay, is a small but romantic indentation in the coast of the south side of the island, in which are the famous Needles. In the face of the cliff is a noble archway between 200 and 300 feet high, which has been created by the constant action of water eating and wearing away the lower beds; while the Needles themselves are only isolated masses of chalk, separated or eroded from the main land by the same erosive action. “To the late Sir Henry Inglefield belongs the merit of having first observed and directed attention to the highly interesting phenomena of vertical chalk strata, occasioned by the disruption and elevation of the eocene and cretaceous formations, which are so remarkably displayed in the Isle of Wight, where the vertical position of the strata, and the shattered condition of the flint nodules, thought still embedded in the solid chalk, may be conveniently studied in the cliffs in the neighbourhood of Scratchell’s Bay.”[108] With the study of the Chalk formation, we close what has been appropriately termed the “secondary period, or middle epoch of the ancient world;” of which it has been well said, “In reviewing the characters of the Cretaceous group, we have evidence that these varied strata are the mineralized bed of an extensive ocean, which abounded in the usual forms of marine organic life, as algæ, sponges, corals, shells, crustacea, fishes, and reptiles. These forms are specifically distinct from those which are discovered in the tertiary strata; in many instances, the genus, in all the species, became extinct with the close of the Cretaceous period. It affords a striking illustration of creative power, that of the hundreds of species which composed the Fauna and the Flora of the Cretaceous group, not one species passed into the succeeding epoch.”[109] Of that old ocean with its countless tenants we have already spoken, and conclude by applying to it the well-known lines of Montgomery, in his celebration of the coral insect in his “Pelican Island:”—