1 56 Dr. Fitton's Notes on the Histmy of English Geology. 



contributed, and still continues powerfully, to diffuse a taste 

 for geological inquiry. 



A letter from the Rev. Mr. Holloway to Dr. Woodward, 

 published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1723, gives a 

 good description of the Fullers'-earth-pits near Woburn in 

 Bedfordshire; — pointing out one of the most striking features 

 in the physical geography of England ; and connecting it so 

 distinctly with the order of the strata, as to excite some sur- 

 prise that the application of the principle was not sooner ex- 

 tended to other portions of the island. — ' For the geographi- 

 ' cal situation of these pits, they are digged in that ridge Xff 



* sand-hills by Woburn ; which near Oxford is called Shotover; 

 ' on which lies Newmarket-heath by Cambridge, and which 



* extends itself Jt-om east to west, everywhere, at about the di- 

 ' stance of eight or ten miles from the Chiltern-hills, — which in 

 ' Cambridgeshire are called the Gog-Magogs, in Bucks and 

 ' Oxon, the Chiltern-hills, from the chalky matter of which 



* they chiefly consist : which two ridges you always pass in gding 

 ^from London into the North, North-east, or North-west coun- 



* ties. After which you come into that vaste vale, which makes 

 ' the great part of the midlaiid counties, and in which are the 

 'rivers Cam, Ouse, Nen, Avon, Isis, and others; — which I 

 ' take notice of, because it coTifrms what you say of the regular 



* disposition of the earth into like strata, or layers of matter 

 ' coming through vast tracts; and from whence I make a ques- 



* tion, whether FuUers'-earth may not probably be found in 

 ' other parts of the same ridge of sand-hills among other like 



* matter?'* 



Stukeley, the celebrated antiquary, has pointed out the im- 

 portant fact in the disposition of the strata in England, that 

 the steepest sides, or escarpments, are turned towards the 

 west, or north-west : but he hastily generalizes this observa- 

 tion, and ascribes the fact gratuitously to the rotation of the 

 globef. The Itinerary of this writer contains many notices 

 respecting the rocks and fossils of the districts he has de- 

 scribed ; to which his index refers, under the title oi ^ Memoirs 

 ' towards a British Map of Soils,' with allusion, apparently, to 

 the project of Dr. Lister, already mentioned: and his notions 

 about fossils appear to have been more correct than those of 

 his predecessors. 



* [Phil. Trans, vol. xxxii-. p. 419. — Newmarket is here erroneously placed 

 on the ridge of Woburn sands (now called the lower greensand): it is on 

 the chalk, and the sands in its neighbourhood are above that stratum. The 

 " question," at the close of the passage, has been justified bj the discovery 

 of Fullers'-earth in the lower part of the Woburn sands, almost throughout 

 their course in England.] 



+ Itinerarium Curhsum, &c. By Wm. Stukeley, M.D. &c. London, folio, 

 17521, p. 3. 



