280 GEOLOGY OF THE ISLE OF WIGHT. 



Upon first reading the above description, my curi- 

 osity was strongly excited, and when in the course 

 of my researches in the strata of the wealds of 

 Sussex, the nuviatile origin of those deposits be- 

 came evident, I felt an irresistible desire to visit 

 Brook Point, in the expectation of beholding a 

 petrified forest of the country that had been in- 

 habited by the colossal reptiles, of which so many 

 remains had been discovered in Tilgate Forest. Nor 

 was my expectation disappointed ; I have visited 

 this coast many times, and always with increased 

 interest — an interest which I hope to excite in 

 some of my intelligent readers, and induce them 

 to repair to the spot, and investigate the phenomena, 

 of which these pages can present but a feeble 

 outline.* The trees are all lying prostrate and 



» In June 1823, my friend Mr. Lyell visited Compton Bay for the purpose 

 of ascertaining more clearly the relations between the ironsand of Mr. 

 Webster, and the strata of Tilgate Forest, of which an account had appeared 

 in my "Fossils of the South Downs." In a letter detailing the result of 

 his investigation, Mr. Lyell remarks : — " At Compton Chine I found in 

 Webster's blue marl, several small Inocerami (I. sulcalus) and some other 

 characteristic shel.s, so that I believe the identity of this bed with the 

 Folkestone gait might be made out by further research. The section from 

 Compton Chine to Brook is superb; we see there at one view the whole 

 Geology of your district, from the Chalk with Hints down to the Battel beds, 

 and all within an hour's walk. — This is so beautiful a key, that 1 am at a 

 loss to conceive how so much confusion has arisen. — The softness of the 

 weald clay has caused a ruinous state of the cliff just where the Sussex 

 marble ought to be. Soon after this, layers of limestone with bivalves 

 appear; then some mottled beds; then pyritous coal (lignite) like that at 



Bexhill 1 presume. In Sandown Bay I picked up a block of Petworth 



marble two feet in diameter, of which and the other rocks I will send you 

 • ii.-.." 



