296 Scrope — The Terraces of the Chalk Downs. 



of the origin of tlie " thousands of raised sea-heaches, many of them 

 only a few feet in height, which may be found in Wiltshire, Dorset, 

 and other counties," according to Mr. D. Mackintosh (GtEol. Mag. 

 Vol. III., p. 69). Were they raised sea, or, indeed, river-beaches, 

 they would be found composed of shingle or rolled pebbles. If sea 

 or river-worn cliffs, they would consist of chalk, or other rock in 

 situ. But on the contrary, they will be found on investigation, I 

 believe invariably, to be composed of made earth, or soil, such as 

 would naturally result from the downward wash of the slopes above 

 annually broken up by the plough through a series of years, and ex- 

 posed to the influence of subaerial denudation, so that, in fact, these 

 terraces brought forward by Mr. Mackintosh as ' proofs ' of the im- 

 potence of rain in moulding the earth's surface, afford on the con- 

 trary very pregnant and convincing evidence of its power in altering 

 the configuration of our hill-slopes within very recent and limited 

 times.^ 



rV". — Eemae,ks on some " Sarsens," or Erratic Blocks of Stone, 



FOUND IN THE GrAVEL, IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF SOUTH- 

 AMPTON, Hampshire. 



By Lieut.-Col. W. T. Nicolls. 



(PLATE XIII.) 



"Y knowledge and observation of facts are neither of them 

 sufficient to enable me to determine the mode of deposit 

 of these blocks in their present sites ; probably they may have 

 been glacially transported, at the same time with the gravel, to the 

 places where they are now found; or, possibly, they, or some of 

 them, may have been swept away from their original localities in 

 the Tertiary formation, by a flood, or floods, general or partial. 



I have taken specimens of only four of these blocks of stone : these are 

 all similar in appearance,being of a small-grained, heavy, and whitey- 

 brown saccharoid sandstone, two of the specimens contain small, 

 partially rounded flint pebbles. There appears to me, to be no evidence 

 of pluvial, or fluviatile action in the deposit of these gravels and 

 stones in the neighbourhood of Southampton, nor have I observed 

 such gravels (high or low level, old or new) to have been laid bare, 

 or denuded, by either of the above now existing causes. 



The neighboiu'hood of Southampton, to the north or , north-west, 

 may at one time have been an estuary, but not the bed of a river ; 

 and the levels of the country around it, must have at that time 

 stood generally lower relatively to the sea-line, than they now ^o, or 

 the sea itself must have been, at least temporarily, higher, to admit of 

 gravel having been deposited everywhere about it ; and there might 



' " This is well exemplified where a hill-side has heen cultivated. Man, while he 

 cultivated it, acted as the destroyer, and Eain only as a carrier to take away part of 

 ■the soil that man had rooted up. If man ceases to cultivate that mountain side, Eain 

 causes plants to grow," &c. [Extract from Mr. G-. H. Kinahan's Letter, Gbol. 

 Mag., Vol. III., No. 19, p. 46.— Edit.] 



