42 Mr. P. J. Martin on the Anticlinal Line of 



namely, that the basins, as they are called, of London and Hamp- 

 shire were once united ; or more properly, as I showed in my 

 " Memoir,'' that these great synclinals had no existence till the 

 convulsion we then contem})lated raised the ban'ier between them ; 

 and that they could not therefore be the areas of a marine deposit 

 posterior to the epoch of •their fonnation. 



At the time these speculations were given to the world, men's 

 minds were fully engaged in the investigation of the formation 

 and succession of strata, their age and organic contents, and less 

 to geological stmcture ; and there was a disposition to repress 

 opinions founded on any appeal to periods of extraordinary 

 activity. The doctrines of uniformity in geological causation 

 had then the ascendency, and Sir Charles Lyell advanced his 

 theory of the gradual erosion of the Weald and the quiet trans- 

 port of the materials into the adjoining basins*. For several 

 years after this I was myself otherwise and better employed, and 

 did nothing in the prosecution of my research ; but from time 

 to time other observers ventured timidly to differ from Mr. Lyell, 

 especially when in contemplation of the accidents of water-shed, 

 and as appearances of violent disruption were occasionally deve- 

 lopedf. Still, having full confidence in the truthfulness of my 

 early interpretation of the structural phsenomena ever under my 

 obsen-ation, and intending some day to satisfy myself with giving 

 the world a history of the Weald denudation, I made occasional 

 excursions, as my leisure would permit, into Hampshire and 

 Wiltshire, believing that the same parallel lines of fracture and 

 concomitant aqueous denudation would there exhibit (in the 

 great chalk dome of those counties), mutatis mutandis , the same 

 or similar features. I say "with a difference," because it could 

 not be supposed that a country composed of so ductile a material 

 as the chalk, ever reluctant to disclose the secrets of its dispo- 

 sition except when great disruptive violence has been used, would 

 offer the broad and unmistakeable marks of disturbance to be 

 found in the variable beds ofthe Wealden, — its flexible clays and 

 its frangible sandstones. 



I felt the propriety of resuming the task I had assigned my- 

 self in this direction on two accounts. First, because I have 

 always found that, in discussing the affairs of the Weald, even 



* This hypothesis took such entire possession of the pubhc mind, and 

 my opinions fell so much into abeyance, that two or three years after, when 

 I ventured to repeat them before the Philosophical and Literary Society of 

 Chichester, I was told that I was " all wrong," — " that Mr. Lyell had given 

 the true explanation, and Dr. Mantell had confirmed it." I thought that 

 this hypothesis of Sir C. Lyell had been entirely withdrawn; but I have 

 been informed that it appears in the latest edition of his Elements. 



t See Dr. Fitton's " ueologj- of Hastings," " History of the Beds below 

 the Chalk," GeoL Traiw.; Dr. ManteU'i Geology of S.E. of England, &c. 



