the London and Hampshire Basins. 369 



little value. The cuttings of the railway now traversing this 

 line of country from Tunbridge Wells toward Hastings, come 

 conveniently to our aid in identifying the existence of these 

 loams ; and I particularly recommend the inspection of a section 

 near Etchingham Church*, where a luxuriant hop-garden is seen 

 standing on a bed of loam at least twenty feet in thickness ; and 

 from thence for several miles across the valley of the Rother by 

 E/Otherbridge, loam-beds of various thickness are traversed. To 

 any one having leisure and patience for the task, I think it not 

 unlikely that amongst these loams minute fragments of many if 

 not all of the upper beds might be discovered. On a cursory 

 view, their principal materials seem to be derived from theWealden 

 beds, — the sweepings, as I before observed, of the I'etiring waters 

 of denudation. 



I have said that diluvial bones have not been discovered in any 

 of the drifts below the cretaceous zone. Of this I have a word 

 or two more to say, and an exception to make. That the remains 

 of the animals that perished in the catastrophe we contemplate, 

 should be found most numerous in the ruins of the uppermost 

 strata, was a thing to be expected. But there is another reason 

 why they should be rare in the arenaceous drifts of the subcre- 

 taceous group, and that is, the bad preservative quality of these 

 soils. I am in possession of mammal bones from the chalk- 

 rubble of West Burton and Bury ; and I have one bone, which 

 I am told is elephant^ s, from a gravel bed of the ferruginous 

 sand-drift at Cold Walthamf. I am moreover informed by the 

 gravel-digger, who has had much experience in the pits at Pease- 

 marsh X) that he has taken out bones ; but they were invariably 

 found in the clay at the bottom of the bed. 



In taking a general view of the arrangement of these drifts, 

 and the constancy of their character throughout so wide an 

 area, we cannot but be struck by a unity of design, and a totality 

 so much in consonance with the other phsenomena of the anti- 

 clinal line generally, and of the Weald denudation in particular. 



Before we finish with the subject of drifts, it will be well to 

 give a little consideration to the question, — Do they exhibit any 

 certain signs of the prevailing direction of the currents which 

 excavated the valleys and carried off the broken materials ? If 

 I have succeeded in enabling my readers to realize in their minds 

 the picture of the conjoint action of earthquake and flood which 

 I have in my own, they will be able to understand the confused 

 flux and reflux, and the clash of opposing torrents which must 

 necessarily follow in the train of so extensive a displacement of 

 solid matter ; whether the convulsion took place at the bottom 

 of a sea or in the open air ; and whether or no it was prolonged 



* Sussex. t Sussex. J Surrey. 



