the London and Hampshire Basins. Ill 



Soc. loc. cit.) ; and other cases of the discovery of such remains 

 in the drifts of all levels are not wanting. The impression on 

 my mind has generally been, when these bones have turned up, 

 that they have the appearance of being the relics of animals 

 buried in one irruption, and torn up out of their graves and di- 

 spersed in another. This will indeed suit all hypotheses of aqueous 

 agency, but least of all that of slow erosion, by ordinary sea-board 

 wear. The flint-beds and porous himgry sands turn out but few 

 mammal bones, and these friable and divested of their gluten. 

 They come in better condition from the chalk-rubble and unc- 

 tuous clays. 



As a general rule, the remains of MoUusca are very rare in the 

 gravel of all the districts under review. I have met with frag- 

 ments of such shells as belonged to the beds broken up in the 

 formation of these drifts, and which have been, like the mammal 

 bones, torn from their original graves and dispersed abroad. 

 The more correct researches we may hope to I'eceive from Mr. 

 Prestwich, who has announced his employment on this subject, 

 will most probably bring much zoological evidence to bear on 

 these points. 



I cannot but remark here on the general character of the 

 scores of illustrative figures of drift-beds exhibited by writers on 

 these subjects. Have they not all one common character of 

 multitudinous and undefinable deposit ? And is not every sec- 

 tion the section of a tumultuary watercourse ? An inrush of 

 washed flints, — an inrush of chalk-rubble or of clay-loam, — an- 

 other of flint, or a mixture of flint and chert, or of ironstone (carr- 

 stone), as the case may be ; then more rubble, or perhaps washed 

 sand and small pounded flint, or more clay or loam, — and so in- 

 termingling the materials of the lower beds with the upper, and 

 the upper with the lower, in ever-varying proportions. I use 

 the word ' inrush,' because I cannot say layers where nothing is 

 properly laid. Go further afield and beyond the range of chalk, 

 and do we not find, mutatis mutandis, the same disorder, the 

 same tumultuary character and want of true stratification every- 

 where prevailing? 



To return from this digression : — the student of drift should 

 now leave the Weald, either by one of the longitudinal valleys of 

 the chalk like that at Bramdcan in Hampshire, for instance, or 

 by one of the transverse valleys like that of Findon on the south, 

 or Merstham and Smitham Bottom on the north, where he will 

 observe the enormous collection of flints, both entire and broken, 

 in attestation of the loss of chalk. He enters then on what I 

 have called the tertiary or supracretaceous zone. Here his atten- 

 tion will be drawn to the strong occasional admixture of eocene 

 shingle, and the great spread of these gravels, particularly in the 



