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



attention to them now, as offering in themselves an epitome of the 

 very extensive disruptive operation, to which, in my earhest dis- 

 sertation on this subject, I gave the name of " the cross-fractures 

 of the Weakl denudation." The anticlinal of Peasemarsh or 

 great flexure of the Hogsback shows its greatest intensity at the 

 first-mentioned place, that is, the greatest elevation of the 

 subjacents of the greensand are there ; and there the transverse 

 fracture shoots off northward to transmit the Wey through the 

 chalk at Guildford, and southward, to bring down a tributary to 

 the same river from the Weald. If we turn to the great anti- 

 clinal of Greenhurst, under the South Downs, we find a still 

 more remarkable example of the same arrangement. This flexure 

 acts most forcibly between Warminghurst and Henfield ; there, 

 the Weald clay rises highest, the greensand is entirely swept 

 away, and a saddle of Weald clay left, with a small outlier of the 

 sand at Ashurst. In this part of the " Valley of Elevation " 

 thus formed, two transverse valley fissures present themselves ; 

 one to convey the Adur through the South Downs in a straight 

 line to Shoreham. The other, a little further west, is the Vale of 

 Findon, through which runs the Worthing road. 



Over and above these various larger lines of contortion and 

 fracture, it may be observed, as before adverted to, that change 

 of dip has had some influence in fissuring and breaking up these 

 masses. Eveiy such change, if sudden, would produce fracture ; 

 if more gradual, it would produce contortion and crumbling. 

 And many of the minor valleys and slopes and lines of drainage 

 are evidently the result of the crackings and twistings of the 

 minor disturbances before spoken of. So that, on a general 

 review of these phaenomena, one is led to the conclusion, that, 

 although some order is to be observed, answering to the tensive 

 influence, — greatest in the shorter axis of the upheaval, and less 

 in the longer axis, — yet the result answers to my earliest pro- 

 position, — " the effect of raising from the horizontal position, or 

 in any other way stretching ponderous and frangible bodies, is 

 to produce a division of their parts in such order and in such 

 direction as their varying strength and tenacity dictate," — and 

 that all the surface-changes of the Weald answer to this predi- 

 cament. 



There is yet one remarkable feature to be noticed before we 

 quit this important branch of our subject. It is the broad and 

 expanded surface and unvarying course of the central anticlinal 

 line, from which we see all the principal subordinate ones rolled 

 back, as it were, on either side. 



If we take our stand on that part of it called the '^ Forest 

 Ridge," — the ground made familiar to all who take interest in the 

 vestiges of extinct organisms, by the labours of one in whom 



