60 On the Anticlinal Line of the London and Hampshire Basins, 



pit, in a copse on the left of the hollow way that leads from 

 Wolverton Park to Hannington. Here the dip heing 30 or 40 

 degrees, the chalk is sooii lost beneath the tertiary beds ; but 

 south of this locality it still preserves the character of the Burgh- 

 clere Hills, sloping away southerly into the broad synclinal hol- 

 low which intervenes between the high grounds of Hannington 

 and those of North Waltham, Popham and Dummer, which 

 belong to the Peasemarsh line. 



From the narrow anticlinal chalk valley before spoken of, be- 

 tween Wolverton Street and Hannington, the elevation is con- 

 tinued south-easterly and then easterly, till it dies away under 

 the plastic clay at Old Basing ; and in a great part of that course 

 it presents a chalk escarpment to the north, with the tertiary 

 beds, as at Ewhurst and Ramsdell, lying almost at its foot*. 



The countiy west of Basingstoke, between Hannington on the 

 expiring Pewsey line, and Dummer on the Peasemarsh, as before 

 said, lies a broad synclinal hollow, in which, and apparently pro- 

 duced by that disposition of the beds, runs the little stream that 

 supplies the head of the Basingstoke Canal. 



Vale of War dour Line. 



To trace out the course of this line from where it was left by 

 Dr. Fitton at Hamham Hill, south of Salisbury, was the next 

 object of reseai'ch. The chalk beds of Harnham Hill dip north- 

 ward, and those of the country north of Salisbui-y southward ; 

 consequently that town stands in a synclinal depression, which 

 is in part occupied by the tertiary beds. The sexton of Salisbury 

 Cathedral tells you that the cathedral is founded on a bed of stiff 

 clay. This has all the character of plastic clay, of which I had 

 satisfactory evidence from an open grave in the north transept at 

 my late visit. The river Nadder and its alluvium occupying the 

 western extremity of the valley, I do not know exactly where it 

 begins to exhibit signs of the existence of the tertiary beds, but I 

 found them fully developed at and near Bemerton, within a mile 

 of Salisbuiy. Crossing the Avon east of that place on the Romsey 

 road, we find that the hollow, south of Ashley Hill, where the 

 words dog-kennel occur in the Ordnance Map, is occupied by 



* If this line of elevation is renewed east of Basing, it is most probably in 

 the Isle of Thanet, a chalk "Outlier-by-protrusion" from the Kentish chalk. 

 Of the manner in which these parallel lines may pasa interruptedly, and 

 sometimes silently through a country, we have a good example in the less 

 questionable case of Portsdown Hill in Hampshire, High Down near 

 Worthing in Sussex, and the cliffs at Seafoi'd in the same county, all ele- 

 vations of the same character lying in the same line east and west, with a 

 dip opposed to the prevailing one of the intervening country. An elevatory 

 force, acting with greater intensity at these points, can alone explain the 

 coincidence. 



