Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 1.djvu/340

 surfaces and roundish forms, evidently from attrition, and exhibit no traces of organization, except when, as is very rarely the case, the substance of the pebble is jasperised wood. The white quartz pebbles, like quartz crystals, on being rubbed together, emit a strong white lambent light, with a red fiery streak on the line of collision, and an odour which much resembles that of the electric aura.

2d. Oval or roundish, and rather flat siliceous pebbles, generally surrounded by a crust or coat differing in colour and degree of transparency from the internal substance, which also varies in different specimens, in these respects, as well as in the disposition of the parts of which the substance is composed. In some this is spotted, or clouded, in very beautiful forms; in others it is marked by concentric striæ, as if the result of the successive application of distinct laminæ: the prevailing colours in most of these pebbles being different shades of yellow. In several the traces of marine remains are observable: these are, in some the casts of anomie, and the impressions of the spines and plates of echini; and in others, which generally possess a degree of transparency, the remains of alcyonia. The impressions, though frequently on the surface of the pebble, seldom, if ever, appear to be in the least rubbed down; thus seeming to prove decidedly, that these pebbles have not been rounded by rolling; but that they owe their figures to the circumstances under which they were originally formed: it is apprehended therefore, that these pebbles have each been produced by a distinct chemical formation, which, it may be safely concluded from the remains of marine animals so frequently found in them, took place at the bottom of the sea, while these animals were yet living.

The formation of these fossils at the bottom of a former sea, and perhaps, on the identical spots in which they are now frequently found, is more plainly evinced by pebbles agreeing in some peculiar