THE WARREN. 29 



immediately beneath is the Gault clay, which, by 

 stopping the percolation of the water causes it to 

 collect in underground, pools and rivulets ; these 

 burst out in the face of the cliff, as you may see in a 

 dozen places, and rush down to the beach below, 

 carrying with them an enormous amount of sedi- 

 ment. A proper system of draining, together with 

 the construction of a sea-wah 1 (which might consist 

 simply of the blocks scattered about below) would 

 certainly check, if it did not altogether prevent the 

 waste ; but it must be a full, and not a half finished 

 system. It would appear that the greatest falls have 

 occurred just at those places where the drain pipes 

 terminate, the water discharged has worn back the 

 face of the cliff , then the end of the pipe has broken 

 off, and this has gone on alternately until, within the 

 last ten years twenty or thirty yards have, in some 

 places been taken off from these gardens. I do not 

 know on what tenure the land may be held, but I 

 should imagine at an annually decreasing rental. 



About the geology of the cliffs we will have a chat in 

 another chapter ; it will be sufficient here to state that 

 we are walking chiefly over the Gault, but that it is 

 covered with a deposit of diluvium some three or four feet 

 deep, in which are thickly embedded numbers of 

 flints, all very sharp and angular, the remnants of the 

 chalk which once evidently covered the whole plain. 

 If we went farther back from the face of the cliff 

 towards the escarpment we should soon detect an 

 increasing thickness of rainwash from the slopes, 

 composed of chalk mud with small lumps of chalk 

 scattered through it. 



At the termination of these garden patches we 



