434 H. H. Howorth — Traces of a Great Post-Glacial Flood, 



sliores, the narrows by which, the great bay communicated with the 

 ocean (for such the transverse valleys must in that case have been) 

 ought especially to present to i;s lines of water-worn shingle, some- 

 thing like the beaches of our own coasts or the raised terraces of 

 Norway. We ought, at all events, to be able to detect as good 

 evidences of the former abode of the sea as are observable in the 

 Valley of the Severn, or former ' Straits of Malvern,' and other 

 parts of England, where sea-shells and shingle co-exist. On the 

 contrary, we find that ... it is just in such gorges that there are 

 patches in the recesses, not, however, of the rounded materials which 

 long-continued tidal action of waves would produce, but of irregu- 

 larly-formed angular or subangular flint gravel and drift, not bedded, 

 and arranged at definite heights above the present drainage, but 

 arrested at various altitudes or lodged in the lowest depressions ; 

 all the remains loMcJi can he detected in them being exclusively terres- 

 trial, except on the southern sea-shore. Occasionally, indeed, the 

 drifted materials are found dovetailed into the cavities of the 

 fractured bones, and land-shells of existing species are found in the 

 loam, commingled with the lost species of quadrupeds" (Journ. of 

 the Geol. Soc. vol. vii. pp. 392-3). 



Again, the same most experienced observer says : " There can be 

 little (doubt) in affirming, that neither during the operations which 

 deposited the debris, nor after them, was the Weald valley occupied 

 by the waters of the sea, or its transverse gorges by marine narrows. 

 There is not a single rounded pebble along the lower edges of any 

 of the escarpments that flank the central Wealden ; still less does 

 the tract contain any fragments of marine shells ; whilst by far the 

 greater part of the detritus is just that which must have resulted from 

 an action which left the shattered debris in positions and conditions 

 which no ordinary sea would have done. Nor can it be suggested 

 that along hundreds of miles of natural escarpments, the supposed 

 lines of deposit of ancient sea-shores, are all now hidden under spoil 

 resulting from the diurnal action of ages. The rocks in situ are 

 everywhere at or near the surface, and nowhere is there any symp- 

 tom of action of the sea." Again, " All the fossils found inland are 

 terrestrial" {id. p. 393). 



Again, he says, " Wherever you examine this detritus, whether it 

 be on the external slope or talus of the chalk hills, or in the broad, 

 slightly inclined flats extending to the sea, you find that, whatever 

 may have been the materials acted upon, they have all been violently 

 broken up and gathered tumultuously and without a symptom of 

 having been subjected to ordinary tidal coast action to produce strati- 

 fication, or long-continued aqueous abrasion to round the flints ; nor 

 do they anywhere contain marine remains, except where the detritus 

 has been shed off into the low situation, at Hove, and has there 

 encroached upon the sea-level" (id. p. 372). Lastly, he says, 

 " Any ordinary tidal action we can conceive would have left signs 

 either of successive sediment or of water-worn pebbles, and would 

 not have afforded the clear proofs that have been adduced either of 

 sweeping denudations down to the bare framework of the rocks, or 



