XL] EOCENE SANDS. 279 



a time in which some convulsion of nature changed the 

 course of the sea currents, and probably destroyed a 

 vast tract of land between England and France, and 

 probably also, that sunken island of Atlantis of which 

 old Plato dreamed the vast tract which connected for 

 ages Ireland, Cornwall, Brittany, and Portugal. That 

 convulsion covered up the rich clays with those barren 

 sands and gravels, which now rise in flat and dreary 

 steppes, on the Beacon Hill, Aldershot Moors, Hart- 

 ford Bridge Flat, Frimley ridges, and Windsor Forest. 

 That rich old world was all swept away, and instead of 

 it desolation and barrenness, piling up slowly on its 

 ruins a desert of sand and shingle, rising inch by inch 

 out of a lifeless sea. There is something very awful 

 to me in the barrenness of those Bagshot sands, after 

 the rich tropic life of the^London clay. Not a fossil is 

 to be found in them for miles. Save a few shells, I 

 believe, near Pirbright, there is not a hint that a living 

 being inhabited that doleful sea. 



But do not suppose, gentlemen and ladies, that we 

 have yet got our gravel-pit made, or that the way-worn 

 pebbles of which it is composed are near the end of 

 their weary journey. Poor old stones ! Driven out of 

 their native chalk, rolled for ages on a sea-beach, they 

 have tried to get a few centuries' sleep in the Eocene 

 sands on the top of the chalk hills behind us, while the 

 London clay was being deposited peacefully in the 

 tropic sea below ; and behold, they are swept out, once 

 more, and hurled pell-mell upon the clay, two hundred 

 feet over our heads. 



Over our heads, remember. We have come now to 

 a time when Hartford Bridge Flats stretched away to 



