36 



Hampsliire at a much more rapid rate than the harder Chalk and 

 subjacent beds. Tlie Undercliflf of the Isle of AA'ight is due to the 

 slipping forAvard of the Chalk and Upper Cxreensand over the Gault 

 clay, the dip being slightly seaward. The shingle of the Englisli 

 Channel travels eastward. Hence, the recent deflection eastward 

 of the mouth of the Avon at Christchurcli. 



The inland scenery of Xorfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, is monot- 

 onous from the surface features being almost invariably composed 

 of the soft rocks overlying the Chalk. And the Chalk itself, in 

 those counties, nowhere stands out in a bold and striking manner, 

 as in the escarpment surrounding the Weald, or the high ridge 

 crossing the Isles of "Wight and Purbeck. A marked peculiarity 

 of Chalk escarpments, as compared with those of the harder Car- 

 boniferous limestone, is that the former are never craggy, but 

 always (though often steep) smooth and voluptuous in outline. 

 And the valleys and combes scooped out of the chalk have the 

 same smooth character, a peculiarity considered by White, of 

 Selborne, to give clialk lulls a superiority over "those of stone, which 

 are rugged, broken, abrupt, and shapeless." Of the formations 

 exposed within the AA'eald area, the Gault and Weald clays make 

 flat ground, the Lower Greensaud and Hastings Sand liilly ground. 

 The finest scenery of the Lower Greensand is in the district between 

 Dorking and Haslemere. TJie Hastings Sands fonn crags in the 

 neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells. Tlie Devil's Dyke in the face 

 of the chalk escarpment of the South Doatos, near Brighton, and 

 the De^-il's Punch Bowl and Devil's Jumps in the Lower Greensand, 

 near Haslemere, are all alike natural fonnations. 



In 1858, Mr. Godwin Austen, after studying the aiTangement 

 of the rocks of Belgium in connection with those of the South of 

 England, came to the conclusion that the anticlinal axis of the 

 Ardennes was probably continuous Avith that of the Mendip Hills, 

 though, owing to the unconfonnity between the rocks of tlie 

 Mendip HiUs and those east of them in England, no indications 

 of this ancient ridge are visible at the surface. When the Sub- 

 Wealden boring was begun at Xetherfield, near Battle, in the 

 lowest rocks of the district, it was thought not improbable that 

 Palaeozoic rocks might speedily be reached. But though begun 



