the London and Hampshire Basins. 131 



Anticlinal Line of Warminster . ' '* 



This line enters soutli of Warminster, and heaves the gait and 

 upper greensand into a dome-like elevation denuded of its chalk, 

 except the remarkable outlier of Cley Hill, which rests on the 

 north side of it. The line then runs through Crockerton and 

 Sutton in a ridge of greensand, as far east as Cortington. At 

 this point the chalk boundaries approximate so much, that 

 little else is to be seen but the alluvium of the Wiley, which 

 takes its course in the line of the rent towards Salisbury. The 

 anticlinal disposition of the valley in its progress eastward is now 

 little more than presumptive ; but the presumption is of the 

 strongest kind. For although no decisive evidence is to be ob- 

 tained by section, the scarped aspect of the Downs on each side 

 of the valley, and its undeviating course a little to the south of 

 east, as far as Wishford, leave little doubt of its true character. 

 From this last -mentioned place the further course of this line 

 appears to be along the valley of Stoford Bottom, the river-course 

 taking off south towards the Nadder at Wilton*. Stoford 

 Bottom points directly toward the Broughton Hills, and the de- 

 clining line of the Greenhurst and Winchester denudations. But 

 I doubt much if a more minute search than I have been able to 

 make could produce satisfactoryproof of the inosculation of these 

 two lines, as before stated. 



> Central Line of Elevation. 



'^It remains now to say something of the central line of the 



'5^eald and the Wolmar Valley. 



; ' Although its broad expanse and superior importance are very 

 much enhanced by the reduplication into it of the synclinal 

 returns of the lateral lines, it no doubt brings with itself many 

 subordinate contortions of powerful agency f. Assisted by these, 

 although they no longer make their appearance on the surface, 

 it heaves the upper greensand between the synclinal valleys of 

 Bramdean and Alton into a broken but distinctly arched escarp- 

 ment, forming at least half the elevation of this western boun- 

 dary of the Wolmar Valley. These beds, and in some places the 

 chalk in the rear of them, afford many opportunities of observing 

 the tilting or sudden upward deflection of the truncated edges 



* Another instance of drainage transversely to the hne of elevation. 



t These minor flexures or puckerings, as they may be called, often run- 

 ning up into sharp anticlinal faults, are frequently met with in the green- 

 sand and Wealden districts. Of this kind is the flexure in Grey shot Down, 

 mentioned by Dr. Fitton, p. 147 of his memoir on the Strata below the 

 Chalk. The efi'ect of these flexures, like that of the greater anticUnal and 

 synclinal lines, is always to retard more or less the outcrop of the strata in 

 which they occur. 



