868 Mr. P. J. Martin on the Anticlinal Lin^ df 



behind by the retiring waves of the denuding flood, after the 

 previous removal of the thousands of feet of upper coatings. 



Soon after I began to turn my attention to these surface- 

 changes, I was attracted to large masses of a ferruginous breccia 

 which were frequently ploughed up and brought '' to bank " by 

 the labourers, who gave it the name of '^ Iron-rag." I found 

 afterwards that it was anciently extensively sought for and taken 

 out of the hollows in which it lay, and smelted like bog iron -ore 

 (which it sometimes resembles), when the fields of Sussex were 

 filled with " iron furnaces." On closer inspection too, I found 

 that many hill slopes were enriched with a thin coating of dilu- 

 vial loam, and especially on the borders of the river-courses, 

 high above the reach of modem alluvium. For the truth of thia 

 I may cite the border slopes of the river Arun from Stopham to 

 Rudgwick*, and onward over half the parish of Slinfold towards 

 Horsham, — ofthe Adurfrom Henfield into the "forest-ridge" — 

 and of the Medway in the greater part of its course through the 

 "Weald clay. Dr. Mantell has observed a modification of the 

 ironrag at Barcombe, Wellingham and Horstedf. And chance 

 some time since threw in my way one of the best opportunities 

 that could occur of observing an instructive exposure of the fer- 

 ruginous drift. In digging the ditches and fencing an enclosure 

 at Lowfield Heath near Crawley {, large quantities of the rag were 

 collected and may now be seen mouldering in a heap near the 

 White Lion public-house ; and if the sides of the ditches are 

 inspected, numerous sections of the hollows in which this iron 

 conglomerate lay may be seen ; corresponding very much with 

 the water-worn depressions filled with gravel on the sand-hills, 

 in the subretaceous zone as before described. Indeed this brec- 

 ciated drift is to be found all over the Weald. On the Weald- 

 clay country of the west of Sussex it is filled with fragments of 

 chert, with now and then a stray flint. At West Grinstead and 

 near Knepp Castle it is full of flint, mixed with fragments of 

 the Wealden sandy-courses ; and on the borders of the forest- 

 ridge it is composed of fragmentary Hastings sandstone with the 

 septaria of the upper parts of the Weald clay, or of the super- 

 incumbent Atherfield beds. 



But the most important evidences of drift are to be found 

 where they might be best expected, — on the beautiful and fertile 

 slopes of the eastern part of Sussex and the south-east of Kent, 

 where the Rother and its affluents take their courses through the 

 longitudinal fissure valleys of the central fine of upheaval. On 

 these slopes, and in these valleys, beds of diluvial loam exist, 

 made up of the washings of the surrounding ridges, and give 

 fertility to localities which would be otherwise of comparatively 

 * Sussex, , t Geol, of S.E, of England, loc, cit, X Sussex, 



