THE WEALD 593 



postulated, before they were obtained by personal investiga- 

 tion and by research, in former literature on the subject. 1 



As the question stands at present, the chalk either covered 

 the Weald or it did not. The onus of proof that it did so will 

 be seen to rest with those who make this assertion ; so far 

 the assumption has been unsupported by any real evidence. 



The Downs and the Escarpments of the Weald 



There runs from the Straits of Dover a horseshoe-shaped 

 line of chalk elevation westward, which, passing by Guildford, 

 trends south to Petersfield, where it takes an easterly course 

 ending in the headland of Beachy Head, and forms a range of 

 hills which, for their uniformity and general aspect, have no 

 exact parallel in Europe. The reason of their singular character 

 is due to the accident of having a unique origin, which stands 

 revealed after a lapse of time, long, even as time is reckoned 

 in geology. The area of the Weald, encircled by these chalk 

 ramparts, cannot fail to strike the imagination as something 

 of special significance, and to arouse speculation regarding 

 the process by which it was formed. 



For nearly a century it has provided a ground of debate 

 for contending theories ; and now there seems to be a 

 general agreement that the chalk of the South Downs was 

 once continuous with that of the North Downs, rising like a 

 dome over the whole Weald, and that the intervening chalk 

 by some process was subsequently swept entirely away. There 

 is the difficulty ! 



Was this removal due to the operation of the sea, to the 

 ice of the glacial period, or to the ordinary action of rain and 

 river ? While some refer it to marine action, others demand 



1 Whilst discussing some twenty memoirs in turn, on the subject of the 

 denudation of the Weald, Mr. Topley, in his Geology of the Weald, quotes only 

 one geologist, Mr. G. P. Scrope, who was opposed to the extension of the chalk 

 over the whole Weald. He writes : Mr. Scrope saw no proof of this, but 

 supposed that the chalk and greensands thinned away toward the central 

 district, which "had been elevated above the sea before the deposition of the 

 chalk, and had formed a ridgy island in that sea" {Quarterly Review on Lyell's 

 w Principles of Geology," April, 1835). The only comment made by Mr. Topley on 

 this opinion was that the resulting surface, when upheaved above the sea, would 

 be very much the same as what is termed a " plain of marine denudation." It 

 will be seen that the real difference is a crucial one. ' Denudation ' being a 

 technical term in geology does not express the process illustrated in the present 

 article. The transformation of the Weald would be more correct. 



