OF HARTING. 3 



and adjacent grounds. He must further understand, 

 that if he extended his research, and proceeded from 

 the valley of Harting Combe, either to the north-west 

 or to the north, he would pass across the same forma- 

 tions, in ascending order, as those over which he 

 has descended ; and whether he reached the hills of 

 Hampshire above Selbourne, or the North Downs of 

 Surrey above Godalming, he would again meet with 

 the same Chalk with Flints from which he began his 

 journey at Up Park. 



In geological language the intervening depression 

 between these two chalk ranges is called a " Valley of 

 Elevation," because the lowest strata of the region, as 

 at Harting Combe, have been raised to the surface, 

 and have thrown off the formations which once covered 

 them. In other words, the time was, when the Chalk, 

 the Upper and Lower Greensand, and the Gault, were 

 all continuous over this now bare country. The great 

 natural convulsions by which this state of things was 

 brought about were necessarily accompanied by vast 

 deluges of water ; and as all the overlying deposits 

 were formed under the sea, so it is supposed (by me 

 at least), that powerful waves of translation necessarily 

 resulting passed over the surface, and removed all the 

 immense heaps of broken materials, which must have 

 been produced by such great earthquakes and up- 

 heavings from a common centre of elevation. That 

 such a denudation took place is indeed proved by the 

 fact, that, with the exception of a few very limited 

 patches of broken flints for the most part that lie near 

 the bottom of the escarpments of the South Downs, 

 the great valley of the Wealden has been clean swept, 

 and its flanks nearly so, of all such debris. The ex- 

 ceptions are in this western extremity of the Wealden 

 denudation only, as in the Lower Greensand of Trotton 

 Common, and near the west end of Harting Combe, 

 where patches of broken chalk flints strew the surface. 

 It is from this great denudation that the parent rock is 



B 2 



