Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 4.djvu/228

 blue and purple marl about three feet thick, and above that a considerable bed of limestone of a reddish grain, over which is found a bed of compact red limestone, without fossils. Above this is a vast mass of coarse limestone without fossils, and beyond it many considerable strata of grey limestone, succeeded by others that are thin and exhibit on their surfaces, when exposed to the action of the sea, some traces of the fossil I have been describing.

Just above the ends of the strata that contain the cane fossil, which at the distance of a few feet would have cropped out on the sward of the downs, there is found a mass of a partially indurated pale yellow sandstone, separated into strata by thin layers of sand. This sandy mass is in part soft, and in part indurated, and contains cavities filled with loose sand. It dips at a very small angle in a direction opposite to the strata which contain the cane fossil, and lies upon the ends of these strata as sand would lie that had been thrown over them by a stormy sea. It seems no where more than a foot thick, and is covered with limestone rubble to the depth of two feet, upon which reposes the turf.

In this sandstone are long stalks of alcyonia, resembling those at the back of the Isle of Wight, but the mass in which they are found being of inconsiderable size, I have not been able to find in it any heads or roots of that fossil. These stalks are white like lime, and although in general much decomposed, exhibit their cylindrical forms very exactly, and if taken in fragments look like carious bones.

I observed in a broken piece of the sandstone upon the horse road already mentioned, a stalk of the alcyonium about two feet long, and branching at one extremity. I also found among the rubbish other fragments of stems, which must have been of considerable magnitude.