76 GEOLOGY OF THE ISLE OF WIGHT 



surface. And Astronomy will take us back into an even 

 more distant past, and show us a nebulous mist of vast 

 extent stretching out into space like the nebulae observed 

 in the heavens to-day, before sun and planets and moons 

 were yet formed. So we are carried into the infinite of 

 time and space, and questions arise beyond the power 

 of human mind to solve. 



Now we have, I hope, a better idea of the position the 

 strata we have been specially studying occupy in the 

 geological history, and shall understand the relation the 

 strata we may find elsewhere bear to those in the Isle 

 of Wight and the neighbouring south of England. 



After this sketch of what went before our Island story, 

 we must see what followed at the end of the Oligocene 

 period. We said that there are no strata in the British 

 Isles representing the next period, the Miocene. But it was 

 a period of great importance in the world's history. 

 Great stratified deposits were laid down in France and 

 Switzerland and elsewhere, and it was a great age of 

 mountain building. The Alps and the Himalaya, largely 

 composed of Cretaceous and Eocene rocks, were upheaved 

 into great mountain ranges. It is probable that during 

 much of the period the British Isles were dry land, and 

 that great denudation of the land took place. But in the 

 first part of the period at all events this part of the world 

 must have been under water, and strata have been laid 

 down, which have since been denuded away. For our 

 soft Oligocene strata, if exposed to rain and river action 

 during the long Miocene period and the time which fol- 

 lowed, would surely have been entirely swept away. The 

 Miocene was succeeded by the Pliocene, when the strata 

 called the Crag, which cover the surface of Norfolk and 

 Suffolk, were formed. They are marine deposits with sea 

 shells, of which a considerable proportion of species still 

 survive. 



We have seen that through the ages we have been 



