United States or Russia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The foundation of all this calculation is, of course, a knowledge of the length of time the Crania and the coralline needed to attain their full size; and, on this head, precise knowledge is at present wanting.
Glacial Formations of Pliocene Age. Bridlington Beds. Glacial Drifts of Ireland. Drift of Norfolk Cliffs. Cromer Forest-bed. Aldeby and Chillesford Beds. Norwich Crag. Older Pliocene Strata. Red Crag of Suffolk. Coprolitic Bed of Red Crag. White or Coralline Crag. Relative Age, Origin, and Climate of the Crag Deposits. Antwerp Crag. Newer Pliocene Strata of Sicily.
And now if I hand round two specimens, one a coralline, and the other something you do not yet know, I am sure you will say at first sight that they belong to the same family, and, in fact, if you buy at the seaside a group of seaweeds gummed on paper, you will most likely get both these among them.
The summit of the small island is composed of a highly crystalline basalt; lower down I found a hard, stratified slatey sandstone, while on the beach are huge blocks of lava, and scattered masses of white coralline limestone. The larger island has coral rock to a height of three or four hundred feet, while above is lava and basalt.
Our author does not propose any other method for the consolidation of those loose and incoherent bodies, but he speaks of the mutual attraction of the component particles of stone to each other; Will that fill the interstices between the coralline bodies with solid marble, as well as consolidate the coralline bodies themselves? or, if it should, How are those interstices to be thus filled with a substance perfectly different from the deposited bodies, which is also frequently the case?
The lower or Coralline Crag is of very limited extent, ranging over an area about twenty miles in length, and three or four in breadth, between the rivers Stour and Alde, in Suffolk. The term Polyzoum, synonymous with Bryozoum, was, it seems, proposed in 1830, or the year before, by Mr.
"The fawn-coloured fossils from his coralline limestone are evidently the same as those of the tertiary formation along the south-east coast of Arabia, and therefore the same as those of Cutch; and it is exceedingly interesting to find that among the blue-coloured fossils which are accompanied by specimens of the blue shale, composing the beds from which they have been weathered out, are species of Terebratula Belemnites, identical with those figured in Grant's Geology of Cutch; thus enabling us to extend those beds of the Jurassic formation which exist in Cutch, and along the south-eastern coast of Arabia, across to Africa."
In the first place, the Coralline Crag is more strictly the product of a single period, the Red Crag, as we have seen, consisting of separate and independent patches, slightly varying in age, of which the newest is probably not much anterior to the Norwich Crag.
The bare idea of this is no doubt terribly repulsive to us, but at the same time I think we should remember how indescribably repulsive our sartorial habits must seem to an intelligent armadillo. Of the peculiar coralline tint of the Wenuses' complexion, I think I have already spoken.
It is chiefly in the county of Suffolk that it is found, rarely exceeding twenty feet in thickness, and sometimes overlying another Pliocene deposit, the Coralline Crag, to be mentioned in the sequel. It has yielded exclusive of 25 species regarded by Mr. Wood as derivative 256 species of mollusca, of which 65, or 25 per cent, are extinct.
Word Of The Day