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



denudations of the south of England or investigations into their 

 causes, have been made since the publication of the description of 

 the Weymouth countiy, and of its phsenomena of disturbance, the 

 joint production of Dr. Buckland and Sir H. De la Bcche, in the 

 Geological Transactions of 1830*. This country lies at the 

 western extremity of the other great parallel line of upheaval on 

 the south side of the Hampshire basin, which, as Conybeare and 

 Phillips sayt, extends at least sixty miles, from the eastern extre- 

 mity of the Isle of Wight to Abbotsbury in Dorsetshire. This 

 line there is good reason to believe takes its course also in the 

 opposite direction across the Channel, like the foregoing, toward 

 and probably into thej^rench coast. 



It would be a task of no great difficulty to bring the phaeno- 

 mena there described into harmonious relation with those of the 

 Weald, and to show their great family likeness and their syn- 

 chronism. There, great perpendicular faults and fissures seem to 

 have been the subordinate agencies and to have done the part of 

 the numerous anticlinals of the Weald. There, mutatis mutandis, 

 the same kind of valleys, the joint operation of fracture and 

 aqueous erosion, are to be found, and the same sort of dilu- 

 vium. But the same orderly aiTangement of the drift that we 

 find in the Wealden area is hardly to be expected, from the 

 greater irregularity of the denuded surface ; and perhaps also 

 the greater variety of the strata, or formations, concerned in the 

 stnicture of the country. 



After speaking of the inadequacy of existing causes for the 

 production of these surface-changes, the authors of the above- 

 mentioned description say, " The only satisfactory solution we 

 can find is in the waters of a violent inundation j and in these 

 we think we see a cause that bears a due ratio to the efiects that 

 have been produced. How far the causes of this inundation 

 may be connected with the elevation of the strata in the imme- 

 diate neighbourhood or in distant regions, is a subject which at 

 present we conceive it premature to enter into, further than to 

 suggest that the relation of the one to the other may possibly be 

 nearer than has been hitherto apprehended J. '^ This was written 

 a year after the publication of my " Theory of the Denudation 

 of the Weald,^' in which I had shown the relation of these phse- 

 nomena to each other, the arrangement of the fissures of the up- 

 heaval, and their enlargement into a system of longitudinal and 

 transverse valleys by aqueous abrasion, and the drainage of the 

 country by their means. If Dr. Buckland had followed out his 

 original exposition of the phsenomena of " Valleys of Elevation " 



* Geol. Trans, vol. iv. new scries. 



t Conybeare and Phill?ps*8 Outlines of the Geol. of England and Wales, 

 1822. 

 X Buckland and De la Beche, loc, cit. 



