256 Physical Geography. 



contrary, taken as a whole, all of the British Eocene 

 formations may, in the widest sense, be spoken of as es- 

 tuarine, for even the London Clay was evidently depo- 

 sited in the broad mouth of a river like the Amazons 

 or the Ganges ; and nearly all the strata more or less 

 contain evidence of the neighbourhood of land, in the 

 bones of terrestrial and river mammalia, crocodiles, and 

 gavials, serpents, birds, and numerous land plants. 

 Pine cones, pods of acacia, fruits (Nipadites ellipticus), 

 figs and laurels, lie thick in the London Clay of the Isle 

 of Sheppey, and remind the beholder of the Nipa fruti- 

 cans, a palm-nut that floats in the arms of the Delta 

 of the Granges. 



The same kind of story is told in the Isle of Wight, 

 in the beds of lignite found in the Bagshot and Brack- 

 lesham beds of Alum Bay. There, where the strata 

 stand nearly vertically, it sometimes happens that each 

 stratum can be accurately examined, and when last I did 

 so, I observed under each bed of lignite a clay with 

 rootlets in it, playing the same part to the Eocene 

 lignites that the underclays do to the beds of coal of 

 the Coal-measures, thus telling of marshes in the broad 

 flats of the Eocene Delta, where vegetation growing and 

 decaying formed beds of peat, that subsequently, 

 buried under newer strata, became converted into 

 lignite. 



Strata in many ways similar to the Eocene rocks of 

 England occur in France, in what is called the Paris 

 basin, and in Belgium. It is not unlikely that with 

 part of these estuarine strata, there may have been a 

 direct connection with those of England, but whether or 

 not, as yet I know of no data that tend to show from 

 what direction this continental Eocene river flowed, or, 

 in other words, what were the general shape and bearings 



