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But now we may read in the Supplement to Lyell's 'Manual, published in 1858, clear evidence of the existence of whales in the upper greensand, some time before the close of the secondary period. I may give another instance, which from having passed under my own eyes has much struck me.
Apart from the few fragmentary remains from the English greensand, to which I have referred, the mesozoic rocks, older than those in which Hesperornis and Ichthyornis have been discovered have afforded no certain evidence of birds, with the remarkable exception of the Solenhofen slates.
Here the clay of the plains gives way to a wooded ridge of low hills, through which the road drives a deep cutting, laying bare the age of the earth in a chronology of greensand and limestone. Beyond the ridge lies another plain, and there it was that on a clammy winter's day I came upon two lonely wayfarers.
Holley calculates that it equals about 150 tons of bituminous coal, such as is found in the Pittsburg region. In England the favorite source of phosphates of lime is the "Cambridge coprolites." These are small, hard, gray nodules, obtained by washing a stratum, of about one foot in thickness, lying in the upper greensand formation in Cambridgeshire.
In 1853, Count Pourtalès, an officer of the United States Coast Survey, which has done so much for scientific hydrography, observed, that the mud forming the sea-bottom at depths of one hundred and fifty fathoms, in 31° 32' N., 79° 35' W., off the Coast of Florida, was "a mixture, in about equal proportions, of Globigerinoe and black sand, probably greensand, as it makes a green mark when crushed on paper."
Side and upper views of half the lower jaw; and side and end views of a vertebra. Apart from the few fragmentary remains from the English greensand, to which I have referred, the Mesozoic rocks, older than those in which Hesperornis and Ichthyornis have been discovered, have afforded no certain evidence of birds, with the remarkable exception of the Solenhofen slates.
Moreover, the Baculites vagina, which is in a tolerable state of preservation, appears to Professor E. Forbes certainly to be identical with a species, so named by him, from Pondicherry in India; where it is associated with numerous decidedly cretaceous species, which approach most nearly to Lower Greensand or Neocomian forms: this fact, considering the vast distance between Chile and India, is truly surprising.
But it is not green, it is red. I know: but years ago it got the name from one green vein in it, in which the "Coprolites," as you learnt to call them at Cambridge, are found; and that, and a little layer of blue clay, called gault, between the upper Greensand and lower Greensand, runs along everywhere at the foot of the chalk hills. I see the hills now. Are they chalk?
M. Virlet, in his account of the geology of the Morea, page 205, has clearly shown that certain traps in Greece are of Cretaceous date; as those, for example, which alternate conformably with cretaceous limestone and greensand between Kastri and Damala, in the Morea.
Flora of the Wealden. Upper Neocomian Greensand of Folkestone, Sandgate, and Hythe, Atherfield clay, upper part of Speeton clay: Part of Wealden beds of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hants, and Dorset. Middle Neocomian Punfield Marine bed, Tealby beds, middle part of Speeton clay: Part of Wealden beds of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hants, and Dorset.
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