Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 4.djvu/322

 them is greater, and towards the upper part of the hill is as much as eight or ten feet.

These flints frequently contain organic remains; of these the most common is the belemnite; shells also and silicified wood are not uncommon.

The height of the hill above the Meuse is I should imagine about 150 feet.

To the eye the strata appear to be perfectly horizontal. As however, I found the chalk gradually rising as I proceeded in a direction nearly south, it is probable that there may be a very slight inclination towards the north. My stay was too short to enable me to give any account of the numerous fossils of this rock. I may however mention that those which I found most common were various species of corallines and madrepores, (particularly the fungites;) belemnites; numulites; several species of echini, amongst others, a small one having the mouth in the centre of the base and vent lateral; several kinds of oysters and pectines. I was also fortunate enough to find a very beautiful baculites with turrited articulations, but this I believe is very rare. It is described in the 3d vol. of Parkinson's Organic Remains, p. 142.

The top of the hill is covered by a bed of gravel, in some places of considerable thickness, containing rolled pebbles of flint, white quartz, graywacké containing veins of quartz, and a red sandstone. I believe that this gravel rests immediately on the strata which compose the hill, and that the beds of sand which M. Faujas de St. Fond thought he perceived under the gravel are only a part of the rock in a state of decomposition.

It is rather extraordinary that this celebrated naturalist should have described the freestone rock of Maestricht as “ un grès quartzeux faiblement lié par un gluten calcaire.” It appears that