A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



not characteristically southern, though certainly not arctic. The as- 

 sociated plants include the oak, blackberry, dog-rose, bird-cherry, wild 

 cherry, and the maple of Montpellier, the last being a small tree of the 

 Mediterranean region, found also in central Europe, but extinct in 

 Britain. The plants point to a climate sufficiently mild for forest trees 

 such as these, and therefore too mild to allow of the formation of ice- 

 foot. Bed 5 does not appear yet to have yielded fossils at Selsey, but 

 deposits probably of the same age at Worthing, Shoreham and Brighton 

 contain only common littoral shells such as inhabit the English Channel 

 at the present day. 



West Wittering, near the western limit of the county, shows a still 

 better exposure of peaty, estuarine loams with derived erratics, equivalent 

 to beds 3 and 4 of the Selsey section. They yield quite an extensive 

 series of land, freshwater and estuarine mollusca, flowering plants and 

 mosses, as well as bones of elephant and rhinoceros. The lists are too 

 long to reproduce; but among the mollusca are Corbicula Jiuminalis, Helix 

 ruderata, and Hydrobia marginata, now extinct in Britain, as well as 

 Helix lamellata, Succinea oblonga and Hydrobia similis, now having a 

 restricted range and unknown living in Sussex. The forest trees include 

 the holly, alder-buckthorn, sloe, wild cherry, cornel, elder, guelder-rose, 

 wayfaring-tree, hazel, oak and sallow. The Montpellier maple has not 

 yet been found ; but among the aquatic plants are two southern forms, 

 Najas minor and N. graminea. A number of the plants are unrecorded 

 elsewhere in the fossil state, and West Wittering has now yielded the 

 largest flora of any Pleistocene deposit in Britain, or indeed in Europe.' 



It has been thought advisable to deal with these comparatively 

 recent strata at somewhat greater length than with the older rocks, for 

 the reason that a thorough understanding of the climatic and orographic 

 changes involved is needed before we can explain the origin of the exist- 

 ing fauna and flora of the county. Moreover, though the whole of the 

 strata described up to this point have so far yielded no trace of the exist- 

 ence of man, yet it must be recognized that elsewhere strata apparently 

 of the same date do yield such evidence. Thus at any moment the 

 glacial and interglacial deposits of Sussex may turn out to be of absorb- 

 ing interest in relation to the vexed question of the antiquity of man. 

 To summarize : We learn from records preserved in Selsey that on the 

 Sussex coast a deposit of glacial origin is overlain by one yielding a tem- 

 perate fauna and flora, this latter being without admixture of arctic species, 

 but including a few southern forms. Above these fossiliferous strata lie 

 stony and chalky loam and Coombe Rock, which, if the interpretation 

 of the evidence is correct, indicate a recurrence of arctic conditions. 

 The strata yielding evidence of a temperate climate seem therefore to 

 belong to an ' interglacial ' mild episode. 



The next deposit to be described, known as the Coombe Rock or 

 Brighton Elephant-bed, is a mass of almost unstratified angular flint and 

 chalk detritus spread over many square miles of country and becoming 



' The fullest list will be found in Rcid ' Origin of the Rritish Flora ' (1S99), pp. 94-6. 



