202 Dr. Ricketts — On Fissures, Faults, Contortions, etc. 



rain. Consequently, as the ages rolled on, layers of tlieni were 

 uncovered, and the softer parts decayed under the subaerial agencies 

 which unceasingly acted upon them. Hence the weather-M^orn cor- 

 roded faces which many of them now present ; effects which could 

 not have been produced within the human era, because they are 

 apparent on those which are disinterred from clay-pits, as well as on 

 the surface blocks. Subsequently, through some convulsion of nature 

 which depressed the dry land, the sea returned for a time to its 

 former bed. Tides and currents in some places undermined their 

 foundations, lowering them till they rested upon the ancient Chalk 

 formation, and at others overwhelming them by deposits of sand and 

 clay. Surging waves pounded all that were soft and friable to their 

 original elements, and scattered small nodules, too hard to be crushed, 

 broadcast everywhere ; so that we can easily understand how it is 

 that so many triturated fragments of Sarsens are now found in our 

 gravel-pits, and why it is that the masses on our downs are scattered 

 about in such profusion. 



Since they were stranded where they now lie, they have been 

 rapidly diminishing in numbers ; for, like everything else among 

 the natural stores which God has given us, they have an economical 

 value. Several examples remain of the way in which they were 

 utilized in primeval times. The huge tri-lithons of the outer circle 

 at Stonehenge, the stupendous temple of Abury, the ci-omlech at 

 Clatford, and Wayland Smith's cave, were all constructed with 

 Sarsens ; and in modern times they have been extensively used for 

 various purposes. We find them in the foundations of churches and 

 old houses in this district, many of our streets are paved with them, 

 and they are still quarried and broken up in certain places for build- 

 ing materials. 



Well may those venerable relics of a former world be called 

 Sarsens, or " sad stones." Their name, if such be its meaning, has 

 a fitness far beyond that which the unlettered Saxon dreamt of when 

 he gave it; for they are the waifs and strays of an appalling wreck, 

 and their condition is akin to that of shipwrecked mariners on some 

 foreign shore. They are, in fact, the lonely survivors of a land 

 which the wasting elements have dissolved, and the floods have 

 utterly swept away. 



IV. — On Fissures, Faults, Contortions, and Slaty-Cleavage.^ 

 By Charles Ricketts, M.D., F.G.S. 



IT was contended in a previous communication'^ that all valleys 

 have been formed by sub-aerial agencies alone, and that the dis- 

 integrated materials, being carried seaward by the rivers traversing 

 them, have accumulated to immense thicknesses in what had been 

 formerly a continuation of these valleys, and have, by their weight, 



1 An Abstract of a paper read before tbe Liverpool Geological Society as the 

 President's Address for the Session 1872-73. 



* " On Subsidence as the Effect of Accumulation," Geological Magazine, 1872. 

 Vol. IX., p. 119. 



