A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



reef-building corals are absent ; but this may be due more to the muddi- 

 ness of the water than to the absence of sufficient warmth. The large 

 foraminifera also, though of extinct species, suggest tropical seas, and it 

 is interesting to find in Egypt whole hills made up of nummulite lime- 

 stone, belonging to a period not far removed from our Bracklesham. 

 The palms also point to a high temperature, though the cones of pine 

 occasionally found associated suggest a climate somewhat less warm. 

 Few pines are now found in the tropics ; but on the other hand in the 

 Bracklesham Beds pine-cones are rare and may have drifted enormous 

 distances, while nuts of nipa occur in profusion in certain beds, as do the 

 tropical shells. 



It has been asked. In what direction lay the continent or large 

 island from which flowed the river that brought this mass of sediment 

 and all this driftwood ? The question is not easy to answer, for though 

 slight indications point to land to the west or perhaps south-west, 

 yet Bracklesham Beds of similar character, though much thinner, and 

 containing the same nipa {Nipa burtini) are found in Belgium also. 

 Perhaps the most probable analogy is with a tropical archipelago, such 

 as the Malayan, with its dotted large and small islands. The few land 

 animals found in the Bracklesham Beds are more suggestive of scattered 

 islands than of a continent anywhere very near to Sussex. 



From the Bracklesham period onward through several other periods 

 the records have been destroyed in Sussex, and all that can be done is to 

 outline roughly the probable course of events up to the Glacial epoch. 

 This we are enabled to do through records preserved in adjoining counties, 

 though for some stages the history is still so obscure that reconstruction 

 is impossible. The marine Barton Beds, which complete the Eocene 

 series, are well developed in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, and they 

 doubtless once extended over Sussex also. Whether this was the case 

 with the fluvio-marine Oligocene strata which succeed is more doubtful ; 

 for the deposits, though 600 feet thick no further off than the Isle of 

 Wight, consist so largely of lacustrine sediments that land cannot have 

 been far distant. Slight indications however suggest that the land then 

 lay to the south and west, and that the deposits became more marine 

 towards Sussex, and are therefore more likely to have been continuous 

 over that county. 



The succeeding Miocene period has left no records either in Sussex 

 or anywhere else in Britain ; but it is almost certainly to this period that 

 we may refer the great earth movements which caused the folding and 

 bending of the strata to which reference has already been made. The 

 mode by which we arrive at this date is as follows : The Eocene and 

 Oligocene strata of the Isle of Wight form a continuous series without 

 break up to the Middle Oligocene ; but the whole of these rocks have 

 been tilted and folded as one mass, so that in places the bedding is now 

 vertical : therefore the great period of disturbance was later than Middle 

 Oligocene. To ascertain the date when the great movements had ceased 

 we reason thus : The earliest Pliocene Beds of Kent rest on an eroded 



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