150 J. 8. Gardner — Correlation of the Tertiary Series. 



that take place here, very seldom allow the section to be seen at all. 

 With difficulty it was cleared, and with the help of Mr. De Wilde, 

 drawings and photographs were taken. The Fern Beds and those 

 below them were seen to contract and become very distorted, and to 

 be finally pushed upward and end in a point. A wedge of hardened 

 sand displaces them, and this rapidly thickens or fans out, and forms 

 a cliff 40 feet high, nearly perpendicular, and filled with lumps of 

 clay, the debris of broken-up leaf-beds. Under the thin end of this 

 wedge is a mass of whitish sand, belonging to the freshwater beds, 

 and stretching a long way west. The transition does not appear to 

 have been violent or sudden, but rather to mark tidal action. Under 

 this cliff a small ledge contains compressed seeds and carbonised 

 leaf-remains of many kinds — identical with those of Bovey Tracey. 

 Beyond a second landslip, the first cliffs that rise from the beach 

 contain a small patch of beautifully preserved fruits and seeds, 

 which are of great interest. The exact spot is marked by a stream- 

 let, falling over the commencement of the cliff, where it is only 

 about 8 feet high. I mention this stream, as it has been persistent 

 for many years. 



At tbe east corner of Boscombe Chine, about 6 feet above the 

 beach, there is a bed containing branchlets with leaves attached of 

 Dryandra, and of a Sequoia-like Conifer. One of the most interesting 

 spots, as well as the most picturesque, perhaps, along the whole 

 coast, is the Honey-Comb Chine. 1 The dark beds near their base are 

 in places so full of the fruit known as Nipadites, that after rain a 

 small hand-basket full may be collected in an hour. I also found 

 the base of a magnificently preserved palm-stem, its roots entangling 

 white pipe-clay, inclosed in a bed of sand. The wood was apparently 

 so fresh as to cut easily into slices with a knife, and the fibres 

 separated readily. 



One other patch, among many, only need be noticed for its flora, 

 and it occurs but a short distance further on, again being identified 

 by a streamlet. The bed is close to the beach, and is of a cigar- 

 ash colour. It contains, besides much bored-wood, limbs of all sizes 

 of an American Cactus, with the spines adhering, and splendidly 

 preserved branches of a Conifer, common to most beds east of the 

 Pier. With these was a shark's tooth. Other patches contain in- 

 distinct leaf-impressions, seeds and pods, casts of Oysters, bored 

 wood, etc. 



From this point the cliffs go on with varying strata, and become 

 lower and lower towards the neck of land which connects the 

 promontory of Hengistbury Head with the main land. On the neck 

 itself all the sand has been washed away, and rolled Eocene flints 

 are mixed with the more angular gravel in one shingly mass. 



The Upper Marine Series is unfossiliferous. 



1 Trespassers are warned off, but the beds are nevertheless well worth examination. 

 The sides, upwards of 100 feet high, are white as sugar, and worn into trellis -like 

 patterns by rain. The ridge separating them, deprived of its gravel capping, and 

 formed of snow-white sand, looks quite Alpine with its sharply-cut peaks and water- 

 worn gulleys, easily magnified by a vivid imagination into chasms and crevasses. 



