THE WEALD 6ot 



rearranged chalk ; chalky matter interspersed with sand from 

 the wealden beds : flints worn and unworn ; ferruginous sand- 

 stone from the lower greensand : and masses of sarsen-stone." 

 (The italics are mine.) 



These products peculiar to the wealden beds were before 

 noticed with reference to Plate I, but the same is true of the 

 Southern Downs. Close to the summit even of Firle Beacon 

 (830 ft.), one of the highest points of all, I have found large 

 fragments of the ferruginous sandstone of the lower greensand 

 weighing several pounds, and one boulder of great size, of the 

 same material, embedded in the detritus. This contains a large 

 number of flints, but they also are foreign to the soil in which 

 they rest. To find these fragments on a pinnacle, as it were, 

 of the Downs, with the entire absence of signs of ice-action of 

 any magnitude such as to transport them to this great height, 

 points inevitably to the fact that they were washed down 

 from mountains to the northward now swept entirely away. 



This shows, moreover, that in the vast period during which 

 the wealden mountains have been reduced to their present 

 level, the plateaus and upper slopes of the chalk have so little 

 changed that stones carried on to them in Pliocene times 

 still repose on their surface. 1 



To stand on this elevation of Firle Beacon, amongst the 

 debris of a still more lofty range, and to realise that all has 

 completely vanished, leaving in its place an abyss of 800 ft. 

 below one, is as sensational an experience, in its way, as any 

 active exhibition of the forces of nature. 



Not only in the Weald, but elsewhere whenever the various 

 branches of the chalk formation abut on strata of another 

 age, as in the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Wolds, or even 

 when uptilted and intermediate between Tertiary and Secon- 

 dary rocks, as in the Isle of Wight, they dominate them, often 

 with the same bold escarpments, thus showing fixity of tenure 

 and greater endurance. 



If we look at the outline of the chalk borders to the north 

 of Dorsetshire (see inset, Plate II) we find the same high, abrupt, 

 escarpment-like termination of the chalk which is so definite 

 a feature of the Weald ; but, with this difference, that while 

 there is nothing like the continuous even edge of chalk escarp- 



1 This also explains the frequent occurrence of palaeolithic flint implements on 

 the very surface. This has constituted a puzzle hitherto. 



