the London and Hampshire Basins. 48 



persons generally well-informed on the subject found it difficult, 

 or could never be persuaded to abstract themselves from the 

 notion, that the Weald denudation was a piece by itself, that it 

 was to be viewed and spoken of as a district from which certain 

 removals had been effected, by whatever means, and where changes 

 had taken place, in which the neighbouring countries did not 

 share. It was therefore most desirable that Dr. Buckland's 

 original views of the elevation of the great chalk district should 

 be restored in the public mind ; and that the idea of a general 

 denudation of all the south-east part of our island should take 

 the place of the denudation of the Weald, of which general de- 

 nudation the latter was only a part. In my Memoir of 1828 

 the case is so put, and in that sense it was my object to revive 

 the discussion. Secondly, I was the more inclined to take this 

 course, because I found that, whilst I was preparing myself for 

 bringing the elevation and denudation of the Hampshire district 

 into relation with the other parts of the same parallel, Mr. Hop- 

 kins was engaged in a review of the Weald in illustration of his 

 theory of fracture and displacement ; and it was highly desirable 

 that any agreement in our views, or any discrepancy, if any such 

 should exist, should stand in juxtaposition. On this account I 

 put myself in communication with Mr. Hopkins, and brought 

 forward a paper '^ On the probable Connexion of the Eastern and 

 Western Chalk Denudations.^^ This paper was read before the 

 Geological Society in the early part of the session of 1840-41, 

 and, as I was told, was ordered to be printed ; but when inquiry 

 was made for it in order to its correction before publication, I 

 was told " it was lost.'' This was the more to be regretted, 

 because it ought to have appeared contemporaneously with Mr. 

 Hopkins^s essay, to which it would have been ancillary; and 

 because that gentleman did me the honour to borrow it, in order 

 to bring his own in relation with it, as much as the difference of 

 our practical or theoretical views would allow. And to myself 

 it was more a matter of regret, because I lost the opportunity of 

 explaining some of the discrepancies to which Mr. Hopkins 

 refers*. But the oubliettes of the council chamber of the Geo- 

 logical Society are not bottomless ; and two years after the pub- 

 lication of Mr. Hopkins's paper, or about three years ago, my 

 MSS. were returned to me without explanation f- I now hand 



* Vide Hopkins " On the Geological Structure of the Wealden District/' 

 passim, Trans, of Geol. Soc, vol. vii. 1845. 



t I am willing to believe that the temporary disappearance of my MS. 

 was the effect of accident, notwithstanding that a large roll of papers, with 

 six sections of the Ordnance Map along with it, must have occupied some 

 space ; and notwithstanding that any, the most trivial matter, concerning 

 a question which has been so long lying at the very doors of the Society 

 undecided, and about which its two greatest celebrities are now openly at 

 issue might have challenged more care. 



