Cetotolites

Cetotolites, a name given by Owen to fossil cetacean ear-bones, which occur in great abundance in the Red Crag of Suffolk (see PLIOCENE). They are rubbed and water-worn, and have evidently been washed out of some earlier strata, which remain yet unrecognised. The extent of these earlier strata must have been very great, seeing that the crag beds now extend over a large district in Essex and Suffolk, and attain a thickness in some places of not less than 40 feet. Professor Henslow in 1843 drew the attention of agricultural chemists to this deposit as a source of materials for manure, and since then superphosphate manures have been manufactured from it to the value of many thousand pounds annually; a striking example of the valuable practical results which frequently flow from a purely scientific discovery.