ROOM III. STRATA OF TILGATE FOREST. 205 



of the softer sandstone for the purpose, was but seldom 

 employed in architecture. In some of the beds pebbles of 

 quartz and jasper are so thickly interspersed, that the rock 

 acquires the character of a conglomerate. 



3. Above the Tilgate-grit are strata of fawn-coloured sands 

 and sandstones, having the same lithological features as the 

 cliffs at Hastings, and the rocks at Tunbridge Wells, Uck- 

 field, <fec. The upper part of these sandstones are in the 

 state of laminated friable shales. 



4. A thick bed of diluvial loam caps the whole, and forms 

 the immediate subsoil of the surrounding country. 1 



STRATA OF TILGATE FOREST. The quarry above described 

 exhibits the usual character of the strata exposed in natural 

 sections, and in the various stone-pits, and other artificial 

 openings, in the surrounding country, and which extend, 

 with but little variation, over the area of Tilgate -and St. 

 Leonard's Forests, to Horsham on the west, and along the 

 Forest Ridge on the east. As a general term for these 

 deposits was required for the convenience of description, I 

 adopted that of " Strata of Tilgate Forest" on account of the 

 proximity of the locality in which the saurian remains were 

 first observed, to the district which, though now cultivated, and 

 smiling with gardens and villas, still retains a name handed 

 down from the earlier centuries, when it formed an integral 

 part of the Roman Sylva Anderida, and in later times of the 

 Saxon forest of Andreadswald? 



It was in this quarry, to which my attention was accidentally 

 drawn by observing a fragment of bone in a block of stone by 

 the road side, that I first obtained teeth, scales, and bones of 

 reptiles and fishes, and fresh- water mollusks and crustaceans, 

 and remains of terrestrial plants of a tropical character ; 

 a discovery which has invested this locality with a high degree 

 of geological interest, since it was the first step in those 

 researches which ultimately revealed the true nature and 

 origin of the strata composing what is now termed the 



1 Consult the "Fossils of Tilgate Forest," (published in 1827,) 1 vol., 

 royal 4to. for details of the stratification, and figures of the principal 

 fossils then obtained from the quarry : or, " Geology of the South-East 

 of England," 1 vol. 8vo. 1833. 



2 See Horsfield's " History of the County of Sussex." 



