ld2 R6V. W. D. Conybeare on the Land-dip of the 



These causes having acted through centuries, have produced 

 a series of dislocations affecting all the seaward face of the 

 range of hills lining this part of the coast for an interval of 

 more than a furlong, from the sea-beach inland. The whole 

 of this interval presents the wildest scene of ruin imaginable, 

 — " crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurled^' in a succes- 

 sion of broken terraces, separated by deep and thickly wooded 

 dingles, an inland range of chalk cliffs mantled by luxuriant 

 screens of ash and elm, wherever the declivity will allow a 

 root to fix itself, forming the upper stage and general back- 

 ground of the scene, and extending to the very summit of the 

 hills. This general character prevails through the undercliffs 

 of Pinhay, Whitlands, E-owsedown, Dowlands, and Bendon, 

 the latter of which has been the principal scene of the convul- 

 sion, which in the last Week has added new features of such 

 magnitude and interest to those which previously marked this 

 range of coast. I proceed to my narrative. On the morning 

 of Tuesday the 24th, at about three o'clock a.m., the family 

 of Mr Chappie, who occupied the farm of Dowlands, about 

 half a mile from the commencement of the disturbances which 

 ensued, was alarmed by a violent crashing noise ; but nothing 

 farther was observed through that day. On the following- 

 night, however, about the same hour, some labourers of Mr 

 Chappie, the tenants of cottages built among the ruins of the 

 adjoining undercliff, hurried to the farm, with the information 

 that fissures were opening in the ground around, and the walls 

 of their tenements rending and sinking. Through the course 

 of the following day (Christmas)' a great subsidence took place 

 through the fields ranging above Bendon Undercliff, forming 

 a deep chasm or rather ravine, extending nearly three quarters 

 of a mile in length, with a depth of from 100 to 150 feet, and 

 a breadth exceeding 80 yards. Between this and the former 

 face of the undercliff extends a long strip, exhibiting frag- 

 ments of turnip-fields, and separated from the tract to which 

 they once belonged by the deep intervening gulf, of which 

 the bottom is constituted by fragments of the original surface, 

 thrown together in the wildest confusion of inclined terraces 

 and columnar masses, intersected by deep fissures, so as to 

 render the ground nearly impassable. The insulated strip of 



