Early in our studies we noticed the great curves into which the upheaved strata have been thrown, and that on the northern side of the anticline the strata are in places vertical. This can be well observed in the Culver Cliffs and Brading Down, where the strata of the Upper Chalk are marked by the lines of black flints. In the large quarry on Brading Down the vertical lines of flint can be clearly seen; and by walking at low tide at Whitecliff Bay round the corner of the cliff, or by observing the cliff from a boat, we may see a beautiful section of the flinty chalk, the lines of black flints sloping at a high angle. The flints in general form round or oval masses, but of irregular shape with many projections, and the masses lie in regular bands parallel to the stratification. The tremendous earth movement which has bent the strata into a great curve has compressed the vertical portion into about half its original thickness, and has made the chalk of our downs extremely hard. It has also shattered the flints in the chalk into fragments. The rounded masses retain their form, but when pulled out of the chalk fall into sharp angular fragments, and we find they are shattered through and through.
Photo 1
Photo by J. Milman Brown, Shanklin. Culver Cliffs—Highly inclined Chalk Strata
Now, what are flints, and how were they formed? Flints are a form of silica, a purer form than chert, as the chalk in which they are embedded was formed in the deep sea, and so we have no admixture of sand. Flints, as we find them in the chalk, are generally black translucent nodules, with a white coating, the result of a chemical action which has affected the outside after they were formed. Flint is very hard,—harder than steel. You cannot scratch it with a knife, though you may leave a streak of steel on the surface of the flint. This hardness is a property of other forms of silica, as quartz and chalcedony. The question how the flints were formed is a difficult one. As to this much still remains obscure. The sea contains mineral substances in solution. Calcium sulphate and chloride, and a small amount of calcium carbonate (carbonate of lime) are in solution in the sea. From these salts is derived the calcium deposited as calcium carbonate to form the shells of the Foraminifera and the larger shells in the Chalk. There is also silica in small quantity in sea water. From this the skeletons of radiolaria and diatoms and the spicules of sponges are formed. Now, many flints contain fossil sponges, and when broken show a section of the sponge clearly marked. Especially well can this be seen in flints which have lain some time in a gravel bed formed of flints worn out of the chalk by denudation. Hard as a flint seems, it is penetrated by numerous fine pores. The gravel beds are usually stained yellow by water containing iron, and this has penetrated by the pores through the substance of the flints, staining them brown and orange. Many of the stained flints show beautifully the sponge markings,—a wide central canal with fine thread-like canals leading into it from all sides.
The Chalk Sea evidently abounded in siliceous organisms, and it cannot be doubted that it is from such organisms that the silica was derived, which has formed the masses of flint. Silica occurs in two forms—in a crystalline form as quartz or rock crystal, and as amorphous, i.e., formless or uncrystalline (also called opaline) silica. The siliceous skeletons of marine organisms are formed of amorphous silica. Flint consists of innumerable fine crystalline grains, closely packed together. Amorphous silica is less stable than crystalline, and is capable of being dissolved in alkaline water, i.e., water containing carbonate of sodium or potassium in solution. If the silica so dissolved be deposited again, it is generally in the crystalline form. It seems probable, therefore, that the amorphous silica of the skeletal parts of marine organisms has been dissolved by alkaline water percolating through the strata, and re-deposited as flint.
As the silica was deposited, chalk was removed. The large irregular masses of flint lying in the Chalk strata have clearly taken the place of chalk which has been removed. Water charged with silica soaking through the strata has deposited silica, and at the same time dissolved out so much carbonate of lime. Bivalve shells, originally carbonate of lime, are often replaced, and filled up by flint, and casts of sea urchins in solid flint are common, and often beautiful fossils. This process of change took place after the foraminiferal ooze had been compacted into chalk strata; and to some extent at any rate, there has been deposition of silica after the chalk had become hard and solid; for we find flat sheets, called tabular flint, lying along the strata, or filling cracks cutting through the strata at right angles. But in all probability the re-arrangement of the constituents of the strata took place in the main during the first consolidation, as the strata rose above the sea-level, and the sea-water drained out. A suggestion has been made by R. E. Liesegang, of Dresden, to explain the occurrence of the flints in the bands with clear interspaces between, which are such a marked feature of the Upper Chalk. He has shown how "a solution diffusing outward and encountering something with which it reacts and forms a precipitate, moves on into this medium until a concentration sufficient to cause precipitation of the particular salt occurs. A zone of precipitation is thus formed, through which the first solution penetrates until the conditions are repeated, and a second zone of precipitate is thrown down. Zone after zone may thus arise as diffusion goes on." He suggests that the zones of flint may be similar phenomena, water diffusing through the masses of chalk taking up silica till such concentration is reached that precipitation takes place, the water then percolating further and repeating the process.[8]
The precipitation of silica and replacement of the chalk occurs irregularly along the zone of precipitation, forming great irregular masses of flint, which enclose the sponges and other marine organisms that lay in the chalk strata. Where a deposit of silica has begun, it will probably have determined the precipitation of more silica, in the manner constantly seen in chemical precipitation; and it would seem that siliceous organisms as sponges have to some extent served as centres around which silica has been precipitated, for flints are very commonly found, having the evident external form of sponges.
It will be well to say something here of the history of the flints as the chalk which contains them is gradually denuded away. Rain water containing carbonic dioxide has a great effect in eating away all limestone rocks, chalk included. A vast extent of chalk, which formerly covered much of England has thus disappeared. The arch of chalk connecting our two ranges of downs has been cut through, and from the top of the downs themselves a great thickness of chalk has been removed. The chalk in the downs above Ventnor and Bonchurch is nearly horizontal. It consists of Lower and Middle Chalk; and probably a small bit of the Upper occurs. But the top of St. Boniface Down is covered with a great mass of angular flint gravel, which must have come from the Upper Chalk. The gravel is of considerable thickness, perhaps 20 ft., and on the spurs of the down falls over to a lower level like a table-cloth. It is worked in many pits for road metal. This flint gravel represents the insoluble residue which has been left when the Chalk was dissolved away.