the London and Hampshire Basins. 375 



to its legitimate conclusion^ as I think he might have done, with 

 the felicity that usually attended his speculations and researches, 

 it is not saying too much to suppose that we might have been 

 spared all the unprofitable labour that has been bestowed on the 

 supposed operations of the pleistocene sea ; which covered a great 

 part of the continent of Europe, and all the south of England : — 

 9, sea teeming with icebergs, depositing here and there the mate- 

 rials they held in suspension, with the remains of animals of the 

 higher orders that floated in from the adjoining countries ! A 

 fallacy that has produced more fruitless speculation, and the ex- 

 position of more false facts and false observations than are other- 

 wise to be found in the recent records of geology. To conclude : 

 the obvious inferences to be drawn from what we have seen, are 

 these: — 



Since the deposition of the tertiary beds a great and sudden 

 upheaval of some parts, and perhaps contemporaneous subsidence 

 of others, took place over a widely extended area ; perhaps over 

 the greater part of the south of England. 



That the phsenomena of the arrangement of valleys, and of 

 watershed, over all the length and breadth of the anticlinal 

 line of the London and Hampshire basins, respond to this con- 

 vulsion. 



That this convulsion was attended or immediately followed by 

 a devastating flood, which excavated and carried off the broken 

 materials, and only left a small quantity of drift to attest its 

 agency ; and that this inundation subsiding, the waters withdrew 

 at once, a period of tranquillity succeeding^ which has continued 

 up to the present time. Or, in other words, that this is the most 

 modern change of any magnitude that has come over this part 

 of the world : it would be hardly proper to say our island, for in 

 all probability this country did not previously exist in that form. 



That although these convulsions may have been synchronous 

 with, or in part the effect of changes " in distant regions,^'' as 

 hinted at by Dr. Buckland and Sir Henry De la Beche, yet to 

 overlook these evidences of local disturbance, and not to con- 

 sider them the proximate cause of inundation and denudation, 

 appears to be a gratuitous dereliction of the proof before us. A 

 part of the truth at least, and that of the greatest importance, is 

 at hand; the rest remains as yet at a distance*. 



* Since the pubheation of the greater part of this memoir, the writer's 

 attention has been directed to Mr. Prestwich's " Geological Inquiry on the 

 Water-bearing Strata of the country around London." He agrees most 

 cordially with all that Mr. Prestwich has advanced respecting that part of 

 the country which enters into the area under review. On this and some 

 other explanatory matters he proposes to make a few observations, which 

 will be the subject of a postscript to appear in the next Number of the Phi- 

 losophical Magazine. 



