EECEEATIVE SCIENCE. 



89 



.ands. Every relic bears its own record, the 

 faithful interpretation of which is ever to be 

 got by careful and intelligent study. 



Now that we have completed our his- 

 torical survey of the expanded levels of the 

 Sussex shores, let us extend our view still 

 further backward in time, and inquire how 

 that ancient bay was formed. The surround- 

 ing land, then, was first excavated by water, 

 even as since the space thus cleared out has 

 been refilled and reconverted into dry land 

 by the same agency. Long before Homan or 

 Norman trod on British soil — long before the 

 aboriginal Celt, unknown to us save by the 

 rude flint axe or arrow-head, or by a few 

 bleached bones reverently laid in simple cist 

 of unhewn stones, or hollowed log of wood — 

 long before the first-born of the human race 

 began his mundane course of pain and pleasure 

 — ^long indeed before, far back in the abyss 

 of time, there have been such changes of land 

 and sea, such out-cuttings and in-fiUings, 

 such wearing down of higher lands, such 

 leveUings of ocean-spoils, both on great ex- 

 tents and smaller scales. In the oldest rocks 

 — myriads of ages old — the constituent par- 

 ticles of quartz or mica, no matter how finely 

 ground, tell of the still older wasted gneissic 

 lands from which those particles were thus 

 derived; the embedded fossils, so unlike the 

 life-forms of this present age, confirm in their 

 quaintness the testimony of the rocks; the 

 rippling sea left ruffles on the sand ; the rain- 

 dr(?|)s of sudden showers pitted its smooth 

 and glistening surface ; worms drilled into it, 

 and shell-fish burrowed in the ooze; green, 

 limp sea-weeds gently floated in the tidal 

 pools ; and sometimes the sea in its gentlest 

 mood spread a gauzy film over the beautiful 

 scene, and carefully preserved it for ever. 



Still the sea was at its ceaseless toU, ever 

 destroying and ever renovating — restlessly, 

 ceaselessly biting into the land and heaping 

 up its spoils upon its shores. 



In the smooth, rounded spurs jutting from 

 the surrounding higher and more ancient 



ground into the Pevensey flats — in the 

 rounded contour of the bounding hills, the 

 bold, steep escarpment of the chalk downs, 

 we see as plainly the denuding action of the 

 ever-toiling sea. If we stripped ofi" their 

 velvety sward from those far older soUs, we 

 should find, if we dug downwards below the 

 subsoil, some great mass of mineral matter, 

 such as clay, chalk, limestone, or sandstone. 



Fio. 2.— Section exposed in a brick-pit near Windsor, 

 showing the differences of mineral composition, and 

 the succession of roclc- strata, a, Vegetable soil; 

 6, London clay ; c, basement bed of London clay ; 

 d, e, mottled clay and fire-brick earth ; /, bed of 

 green-coated flints in dark sand ; g, chalk. 



If we dug very deep, we should find that 

 such masses alternated with, or reposed upon, 

 each other. We should find, too, that these 

 rocks— fov by that term geologists designate 

 the great earth-masses forming the crust of 

 our globe — contained peculiar fossils, or 

 petrified organic remains, different forms of 

 which were characteristic and distinctive of 

 each separate mineral stratum. If the strata 

 or beds of earth had any particular inclina- 

 tion, we should obtain all this knowledge 

 without digging, by simply walking over the 

 country and noticing what happened at their 

 outcrops, as those areas are termed where 

 the beds rise and present their hassetting 

 edges at the surface. If we thus extended 



