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



by a continued heaving and falling (terrene undulations of 

 incalculable violence) of some continuance*. We have not the 

 means of following the great bulk of the displaced materials. 

 Much of it was doubtless cast off over the great synclinals on each 

 side. We have sufficient evidence of this in the loams and the 

 extensive gravel beds in the mixed diluvium of the London 

 basin f. And we have a striking proof of it in the enormous 

 accumulations of the less destructible parts of them in the Brigh- 

 ton " elephant beds ; '' in the inexhaustible sources of flint- 

 gravel, sometimes of unknown depth, from thence to Chichester, 

 under Portsdown Hill, and further west on the northern slope of 

 the Hampshire basin. But leaving this out of consideration, 

 and supposing these accumulations to be only the tithe part of 

 the lost beds, and the great bulk of them to be lying at the 

 bottom of the German Ocean, and rising out of it in the Cromer 

 Cliffs, or spread over the plains of Westphalia, we are soon con- 

 vinced that the drift I have attempted to describe, is only the 

 remnants of those materials, and the last leavings of the reti- 

 ring waters. 



The motions of these retiring waters, then, would now, after 

 the great business of excavation was effected, be determined by 

 the an*angement of the surface so left. Whether the centre of 

 the upheaval be in the high grounds of the Weald or in the En- 

 glish Channel nearer the Boulonnais, it is not material to inquire ; 

 nor whether the Channel as we now see it had previously to this 

 convulsion any existence or not : most probably it had not. In 

 whatever direction the central movement lay, every wave would 

 have its recoil, and the flood would have so wide a range as to 

 take whatever courses the great boundary lines would dictate. 

 As these boundary lines run for the most part east and west, in 

 the long axis of the upheaval, we expect to see signs of the move- 

 ment of drift in those directions. Nevertheless there is suffi- 

 cient proof of cross and contrary movements, and of the frequent 

 deflection of currents in opposite courses. The large accumula- 

 tion of flints in the transverse vale of Findon f, is matched by a 

 similar deposit in the long longitudinal one of Bramdene§. The 

 long transverse valleys of Leatherhead and Smitham Bottom || 

 have at their lower extremities, the one a great accumulation of 



♦ I have not been able to detect any appearance of friction like " slick- 

 ensides.** But such appearances were obsened by Buckland and De la 

 Beche in Dorsetshire (Geol. Trans, vol. iv. new series). I attril^ute the 

 absence of such appearances in the Wealden aiea to the friable and loose 

 nature of the rocks and the flexibility of the clays. 



f This does not militate against the opinion that all the beds to be found 

 there have also suffered denudation, crag and all. 



X Sussex. § Hants. || Surrey. 



