﻿Gardners Tropical Forests of Hampshire. 23 



In conclusion, may I venture to hope that before long some rules 

 respecting stratigraphical nomenclature may be promulgated which 

 may regulate in some way the issue of new names. It will surprise 

 some of your readers when I say that I have lying before me a list 

 of more than four thousand stratigraphical names. 



nsroTiOiES oif- ^v^:E:vI:oII^S- 



I. — The Tropical Forests of Hampshire : Being the substance 

 OF A Lecture delivered in connexion with the Loan Col- 

 lection, South Kensington, by J. S. Gardner, F. G.S., 

 Saturday, Dec. 2nd, 1876, 

 ^'Tj^NGLAND at the present time has a climate far from tropical, 

 Pj but the time to which I refer was when the palm and spice- 

 plants flourished here, and when the cl^imate may rightly be spoken 

 of as tropical, not in a poetical or metaphorical sense, but actually. 

 The data on which our inferences are based are the fossil leaves 

 which we find in the clays of the south of Hampshire, Out of the 

 many thousands obtained during many years, I have selected some 

 which have been exhibited in the Loan Collection, Some have also 

 been brought in illustration of our subject to-night. Collections of 

 leaves from this spot and from Alum Bay have also been made by 

 Mr, W. S. Mitchell, M.A., and others, and are now preserved in the 

 British Museum. 



It is the district immediately along the line east and west of 

 Bournemouth which I have specially examined. The beds which 

 occupy this area are of the age of the Lower Bagshot. Above the 

 Bagshot series we have the Bracklesham beds full of marine forms ; 

 the Barton beds, also full of marine forms, but telling a tale of a 

 different sea ; the Headon, Bembridge, and Hempstead series, with 

 many repetitions of marine and fresh-water conditions, indicative 

 of long lapses of time. There is, too, the whole Miocene period, 

 of which we have no trace in this district, but which we believe 

 from continental evidences was of vast duration. Then, too, there 

 followed periods of immense length, during which England under- 

 went its latest Glacial epoch ; after that the time during which the 

 Eiver Yalley gravels and Brick-earths were formed. While, there- 

 fore, we speak of these beds as almost the youngest of the geological 

 series, they really belong, when measured in years, to periods of an- 

 incalculably remote past," 



With the help of diagrams and pictures Mr, Gardner traced 

 the series of beds from Corfe to Wareham, Poole, and Studland, 

 and then back from Studland to the mouth of Poole Harbour, and 

 along the shore past Branksome to Bournemouth, and on to 

 Hengistbury Head, the physical features and general appearance 

 of the country being described. The alternations of clays, sands, 

 and pebble beds, as they appear in the cliffs, and the pipe-clay 

 diggings, were especially referred to, and Mr. Gardner then con- 

 tinued : — " No order of arrangement is at first apparent in these 

 beds, but by traversing the sections many times and studying 



