On the so-called Spongia paradoxica, S. Woodward, from the Red and White Chalk of Hunstanton

T he sea-cliff of Hunstanton in Norfolk offers one of the most interesting sections along our eastern coast. We there have an opportunity of examining in detail all the beds from well down in the Lower Greensand fairly up into the Chalk, and we see that, where we should have expected to find the Gault and Cambridge Greensand, there is instead a conspicuous band of red rock about 4 feet in average thickness, which, when examined closely, seems to pass up into the Chalk above, part of the lowest bed of which is mottled with stains and nests of red earthy oxide of iron, and to pass down through more and more sandy layers into the Lower Greensand underneath, as if it was either largely derived from the Lower Greensand, or the conditions of deposit of the Lower Greensand were still going on while the earlier part of the Red Rock was being formed. When we stand off at a little distance, however, the line of demarcation appears more sharply defined by the results of weathering. Palæontologically, too, it is a section of great interest. The Red Rock and the lower part of the Chalk are full of organisms of various kinds, of which lists have been given by Taylor, Samuel Woodward, Rose, Wiltshire §, Seeley ∥, and others; and in these lists we find repeatedly the description or mention of a fossil which, from the time of Woodward on, was referred to under the name of Spongia or Siphonia paradoxica .