Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 4.djvu/321



About a league from Maestricht you obtain a good section of the lower beds of the hill, and these are decidedly chalk, containing beds of flint nodules from two to three feet distant from each other. The chalk appears to contain fewer fossils than that which we have in this country, but in the nature of these fossils, and in every other respect, completely resembles it.

Above these are beds resembling the chalk in colour, but more hard and gritty to the touch.

Above these again lie a succession of beds of the calcareous freestone of which the mass of the hill is composed, and it is in these that the quarries are situated. This stone is of a yellowish colour, and so extremely soft in the quarry that it may be easily cut with a knife; it becomes however of a lighter colour and more hard by exposure to the air. Here and there is found a thin stratum completely made up of fragments of marine substances; these are chiefly species of corallines and madrepores mixed with shells. In these thin strata the remains are much less perfect than in those which contain fewer of them, and their substance is so extremely tender that it is very difficult to obtain a specimen which does not break to pieces immediately. Such parts of the rock, though of course unfit for building, are not useless, but are broken down, and in that state conveyed by the Meuse to Holland as a manure for the meadow land.

The whole of these beds from the chalk to the top of the hill are separated from each other by beds of flints, which exactly resemble those found in the chalk, presenting like them the usual appearance of having been formed on corallines, &c.

The beds of flints in the chalk and lower strata of freestone, as has been mentioned, are at a distance from each other of not more than two or three feet, but as you ascend, the distance between