Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 1.djvu/366

 variations can hardly be considered as interrupting the continuity of the stratification.

Indeed when it is considered, that in France much more frequent opportunities are afforded of examining the stratification immediately above the chalk than in England, it will not be regarded as improbable, that several of these beds or patches may exist here, the discovery of which would render the accordance of the two series of strata much more close.

Even from the examinations which have been already made, the identity of the French and English chalk is established. The British strata above the chalk are also found to contain patches of plastic clay, of most of the varieties mentioned in the French strata, as well as patches of coarse limestone, with its accompanying sand and its peculiar fossil shells, such as are found to exist in the corresponding French strata.

The other difference, the existence, in France, of beds of sand and of sandstone above those of gravel, which are the highest strata of this island, is very remarkable. May it not be attributable to the abruption, from this island, of the superior strata or beds of this formation, by that catastrophe, instances of the astonishing force of which have been already noticed?