The Student's Elements of GeologyLyell, Charles, Sir
Science
The Student's Elements of Geology
Lyell, Charles, Sir
Geology
Hemipneustes radiatus.
I saw proofs of the previous denudation of the white chalk exhibited in
the lower bed of the Maestricht formation in Belgium, about 30 miles
S.W. of Maestricht, at the village of Jendrain, where the base of the
newer deposit consisted chiefly of a layer of well-rolled, black
chalk-flint pebbles, in the midst of which perfect specimens of
_Thecidea papillata_ and _Belemnitella mucronata_ are imbedded. To a
geologist accustomed in England to regard rolled pebbles of chalk-flint
as a common and distinctive feature of tertiary beds of different ages,
it is a new and surprising phenomenon to behold strata made up of such
materials, and yet to feel no doubt that they were accumulated in a sea
in which the belemnite and other cretaceous mollusca flourished.
Pisolitic Limestone of France.—Geologists were for many years at
variance respecting the chronological relations of this rock, which is
met with in the neighbourhood of Paris, and at places north, south,
east, and west of that metropolis, as between Vertus and Laversines,
Meudon and Montereau. By many able palæontologists the species of
fossils, more than fifty in number, were declared to be more Eocene in
their appearance than Cretaceous. But M. Hébert found in this formation
at Montereau, near Paris, the _Pecten quadricostatus,_ a well-known
Cretaceous species, together with some other fossils common to the
Maestricht chalk and to the Baculite limestone of the Cotentin, in
Normandy. He therefore, as well as M. Alcide d’Orbigny, who had
carefully studied the fossils, came to the opinion that it was an upper
member of the Cretaceous group. It is usually in the form of a coarse
yellowish or whitish limestone, and the total thickness of the series
of beds already known is about 100 feet. Its geographical range,
according to M. Hébert, is not less than 45 leagues from east to west,
and 35 from north to south. Within these limits it occurs in small
patches only, resting unconformably on the white chalk.
The _Nautilus Danicus,_ Fig. 230, and two or three other species found
in this rock, are frequent in that of Faxoe, in Denmark, but as yet no
Ammonites, Hamites, Scaphites, Turrilites, Baculites, or Hippurites
have been met with. The proportion of peculiar species, many of them of
tertiary aspect, is confessedly large; and great aqueous erosion
suffered by the white chalk, before the pisolitic limestone was formed,
affords an additional indication of the two deposits being widely
separated in time. The pisolitic formation, therefore, may eventually
prove to be somewhat more intermediate in date between the secondary
and tertiary epochs than the Maestricht rock.
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