86 



Green-sand wlucli once covered it, began slowly to rise again 

 to the surface and become dry land ; and as the waters gradually 

 receded and carried with them away to the West the debris in 

 their rush, these gravels were left behind in the pockets and 

 fissures of the Oolitic rocks, then the old sea bed. Thus the 

 direction of the current in this case would be the reverse of that 

 which deposited or re-aSsorted the Northern drift j whilst the 

 latter came from the North and North-west, the flints seem to 

 have come from the South in accordance with the configuration 

 of the land — from the Chalk hills, that is, towards the lower 

 plateau and valleys North of the Chalk. As to the age of those 

 deposits, we may, I think, place them any time between the 

 elevation of the Clialk hills, and the glacial period ; somewhere 

 that is before the final disappearance of tlie Tertiary period, and 

 the setting in of the glacial period. So that those deposits on 

 our hills would be, according to this view, considerably older 

 than the gravels in the river valleys, and were probably laid 

 down before the valleys had assumed their present shape ; the 

 object of these few and imperfect notes will be gained if I have 

 succeeded in exciting an interest in our local geological phenomena 

 second to none in variety, and a study of which will repay any 

 who pursue it both in body and mind — adding vigour to the one 

 and enlarging the scope of the other. 



During the progress of these notes, whilst looking up the 

 literature of the subject, I found an abstract of a paper read 

 before the Geological Society of London, and printed in the 

 Sixth Vol. of their Journal (1850), by the late Mr. C. H. Weston, 

 of Ensleigh, in which he describes the finding of these flint 

 gravels on the table-lands around Bath, and gives an account of 

 their existence in a trough of the Oolite on Kingsdown. Having 

 Avorked without any previous knowledge of his paper I am pleased 

 to find that our facts agree, as do the main deductions therefrom. 



The subject of these deposits had not created such an interest 

 then as no\v ; it therefore serves to increase my admiration for a 



