﻿Correspondence — Mr. J. S. Gardner. 137 



At Weybourn I hear that the sea broke through the beach and 

 flooded the Coastguards' cottages. 



None of the fishermen can remember a single tide doing so much 

 harm. I believe a yard is rather more than the estimated yearly loss 

 of land. And Mr. Upscher informs me that he reckons his loss of 

 land during the past sixty years to be thirty acres at the very least. 



Geological Suuvey, Cromer, Clement Keid. 



I'i-th Februartj, 1877. 



THE TEOPICAL FORESTS OF HAMP^HIEE. 



Sir, — I have no wish to enter into any discussion with Mr. Searles 

 Wood, jun. ; but he has, it seems to me, written to you upon a 

 subject on which, notwithstanding his large store of geological 

 knowledge, he appears to be quite unacquainted. The supposition, 

 alluded to in my lecture at South Kensington, that oscillations of 

 climate might partly account for the varied character of the Bagshot 

 Floras, is partly based upon and supported by strong negative and 

 some positive evidence, of alternating warmer and colder conditions, 

 not glacial; contained not only in English Eocene, but all Tertiary beds 

 throughout the world, although these seem to have escaped Mr. Wood's 

 appreciation. No glacial conditions are necessary to explain any- 

 thing connected with the Eocene Floras ; but Mr. Wood cannot surely 

 suppose that the Bagshot leaves from the London basin and those 

 from Bournemouth and Alum Bay indicate an equal temperature ; or 

 that the Fauna of the Thanet sands, Woolwich beds, and London 

 Clay, or the Bracklesham, Headon, Bembridge, and Hempstead 

 beds do not make plain to us that the climatal conditions during 

 the deposition of our Eocene series differed widely at each period. 



The second hypothesis, that of the existence of a mean annual 

 temperature which permitted the growth of sub-tropical and more 

 temperate forms side by side, is supported by abundant evidence, and 

 is the one by which Ettingshausen, and almost every continental 

 geologist who has devoted himself to the study of Tertiary Floras, 

 can best explain the universal admixture of these forms at that time 

 in all our, at present, temperate climates. Mr. Searles V. Wood, 

 jun., however, states that both these theories are " remote from the 

 truth," and proceeds to make some extraordinary mis-statements 

 in the process of giving what he believes to be the true explanation. 

 After expressing the total thickness of these beds, which reach 

 nearly 1000 feet, as " upwards of 200 ' feet," he goes on to say that 

 the vegetable remains have been drifted, and are not in situ. 



Mr. Wood can never have personally worked at these beds, or 

 even examined collections made from them by others, or he could 

 not have so failed to comprehend what he had seen. 



He appears not to be at all aware of the published work and the 

 conclusions of those who have studied these beds in England, or the 

 similar leaf-bearing Eocene and Miocene beds abroad ; neither can 

 he have heard or read the statements made by me in my lecture, or 

 in an appendix to it communicated to the Geologists' Association. 



1 This was a Printer's error ; Mr. Searles V. Wood, jun., correctly stated the 

 thickness at 2000 feet, see his letter at p. 141. We regret the mistake exceedingly. 

 Edit. Geol. Mag. 



