124- Chronological Arrangement of fossiliferous Deposits, 



encroachment within the last quarter of a century ; and my 

 personal knowledge, not reaching backward more than ten 

 years, enables me to state that the features of the whole coast 

 line are annually changing. 



The cliffs which skirt this coast from Whitstable to llecul- 

 ver display beautiful sections of the London and plastic clays, 

 with their associated sands; and are richly stored with their 

 characteristic fossils. The whole line is capped with a thick 

 bed of diluvial gravel, which abounds with mammalian re- 

 mains. 



The result of the degradation which is thus uninterruptedly 

 taking place is, to scatter in profusion, on a line of coast more 

 than twenty miles in extent, the mammalian spoils of the 

 diluvial gravel, and the organic treasures of two rich tertiary 

 deposits. The action of the tides, which, on the Kentish 

 coast, run nearly parallel to the land, gradually convey the 

 lighter and fragile portions of the bones and shells into the 

 comparatively deeper water, and there quietly deposit their 

 burthen. The larger bones, and the weightier fossils, retain 

 the stations which their gravity has assigned to them, and 

 are gradually circumvented by, and involved in, the ad- 

 vancing waters. 



That I am not indebted to my imagination for these facts, I 

 may state, and some of the readers of this Magazine may 

 remember, that, about two years since, I crowded the table 

 of the Geological Society of London with fossil mammalian 

 remains dredged up by the fishermen of Whitstable and 

 Heme Bay, in their daily avocations. The greater part 

 were derived from the outlying oyster beds, which extend 

 more than a mile and a half from the shore ; others from a 

 much greater distance; so that little doubt can exist that these 

 animal reliquiae were embedded in the diluvial detritus which 

 capped the cliffs of this coast, and which have fallen beneath 

 the undermining action of the tides and waves. Similar 

 remains are found in the gravel bed extending inland, when- 

 ever it is extensively explored : but what renders their 

 identity unquestionable is, the fact that the larger bones 

 have their interior still filled with the yellow loam and the 

 small flints of the gravel bed. They are, moreover, in a 

 good state of preservation, and appear to have suffered no 

 violence since their displacement: their condition may be 

 ascribed to the soft and tenacious nature of the blue, or 

 London, clay, on the surface of which they repose. With 

 the exception of the. external discoloration, arising from 

 their long contact with the clay, they are not to be distin- 

 guished from their undisturbed brethren of the superficial 



