CHAPTER XV. 



EOCENE FORMATIONS. 



THE EOCENE STB ATA, to which we have now come in 

 this epitome of British geological history, form the 

 oldest members of the Tertiary or Cainozoic series. It 

 ought, however, to be remembered, that the terms 

 Palaeozoic or Primary, Mesozoic or Secondary, and 

 Cainozoic or Tertiary, are mere terms of local conveni- 

 ence, unfit even for minor territories such as Europe, as 

 the notice of strata intermediate to the Chalk and 

 Eocene beds shows at the end of last chapter. I cannot 

 enter on the details of this subject here. Readers must 

 work it out for themselves, and there is no lack of 

 printed matter from which to do so. 



The EOCENE ROCKS of England lie in two basins, 

 those of London and Hampshire. Both are surrounded 

 and underlaid by the Chalk. The London basin extends 

 westward from the mouth of the estuary of the Thames 

 to the neighbourhood of Marlborough, and northward 

 till it is lost beneath the drift of Suffolk and Norfolk. 

 The north boundary of the Hampshire basin runs from 

 Beachy Head to the neighbourhood of Salisbury and 

 Dorchester. The Chalk Downs near Newport, Isle of 

 Wight, form its southern boundary. In both areas the 

 Chalk and Tertiary strata are little disturbed, except in 

 the Isle of Wight and at Purbeck, where for a space 

 they have been heaved nearly on end. The Lower 



