THE SCENERY OF THE ISLAND 107 



very picturesque situationsas Godshill on a spur of the 

 southern downs, Newchurch on a bluft overlooking the 

 Yar valley, Shorwell nestling among trees in a south- 

 looking hollow of the downs, Brighstone with its old church 

 cottages and farmhouses among trees and meadows 

 between down and sea the old and interesting churches, 

 the thatched cottages, the old manor houses of Elizabethan 

 or Jacobean date, now mostly farm houses, for which the 

 Island is famous, add to the varied natural beauty. 

 One of the most characteristic features of the southern 

 coasts of the Island, should be mentioned, the Chines, 

 narrow ravines which cut inland from the coast through 

 the sandstone and clays of the Greensand and Wealden 

 strata, and along the beds of which small streams flow to 

 the sea. Narrow and steep-sided, the name by which 

 they are called is akin to chink they are in striking 

 contrast to the more open valleys of the streams which 

 flow into the Solent on the north shore of the Island. The 

 most beautiful is Shanklin Chine. The cliff at the mouth 

 of the chine, just inside which stands a picturesque fisher- 

 man's cottage with thatched roof, is 100 ft. high ; and the 

 chasm runs inland for 350 yds., to where a very reduced 

 cascade (for the water thrown out of the Upper Greensand 

 by the Gault clay is tapped at its source for the town 

 supply) falls vertically over a ledge produced by hard 

 ferruginous beds of the Greensand. Above the cascade 

 the ravine runs on, but much shallower, for some 900 yards. 

 The lower ravine has much beauty, tall trees rising up the 

 sides, and overshadowing the chasm, the banks thickly 

 clothed with large ferns and other verdure. Much wilder 

 are the chines on the south-west of the Island. The 

 cascade at Blackgang falls over hard ferruginous beds (to 

 which the beds over which Shanklin cascade falls though 

 on a smaller scale probably correspond). The chine 

 above these beds, being hollowed out in the soft clays and 

 sands of the Sandrock series, is much more open. Whale 



