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PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



the formation of this deposit. The proof of such violence is exhi- 

 bited in the sharply fractured condition of the flints which are mixed 

 up in the breccia. Not one is rounded, whilst most of them are 

 sharply fractured as if by some sudden tangential force. The proxi- 

 mate cause of their being so unrolled when drifted into the Brighton 

 depression was, I doubt not, the splitting-up of the adjacent chalk to 

 the north of the town by the anticlinal line before alluded to, and 

 which passes from Pie Combe into the depression of Falmer, there 

 separating the chalk of Newmarket Hill, Ovingdean, and Brighton 

 from that of Lewes Race Course and Plimpton Plain. 



Before the town of Brighton had increased in a northerly direction, 

 this drift or breccia was seen to extend in the depression between the 

 chalk-hills in which the road to London runs. A like position of 

 the materials occurs at the east end of Kemp Town, where the 

 hollow in which the gas-works are placed is also occupied by rudely 

 stratified alternations of masses of sharp flints, with small rounded 

 fragments of chalk, and yellowish sandy loam with flints. In truth, 

 the Gas Company drove a tunnel through this detritus, for the pur- 

 pose of bringing coals on an incline from the shore to their esta- 

 blishment ; and, although it is now not used as such, and is blocked 

 up at the northern end, any one may still walk into this tunnel for 

 thirty or forty paces, and thus examine on either side the nature of 

 the lower portion of the breccia, which is there very chalky. 



Thanks to the former labours of Dr. Mantell, nearly all the animal- 

 remains of this accumulation are well known. Those noted by him are 

 Elephas primigenius, Equus fossilis, E. plicidens (Owen), Asinus fos- 

 silis, Bos, Cervus, &c. In addition to these I procured last autumn 

 some very perfect teeth which Dr. Mantell has referred to Rhinoceros 

 tichorhinus. I may here mention that these remains of Rhinoceros were 

 found in the chalky rubble through which the above-mentioned tunnel 

 was cut, and under about 25 feet of superjacent unstratified flint- 

 breccia (in which however other bones were found) . They were acci- 

 dentally disinterred by the workmen who were cutting new walks 

 from the top of the cliff to the shore east of Kemp Town, and who, 

 using this tunnel to take their meals in, had, in excavating a hole in 

 its side to hold their food aud utensils, detached the remains in 

 question. The same men, whose progress I watched, had previously 

 procured for me remains of Horse's teeth and Stag, but the better- 

 preserved bones of the Rhinoceros were low down in the softer chalk- 

 rubble, the others in the overlying and more flinty chaotic mass. 



It has before been stated, that similar fossil bones occur within the 

 Wealden denudation and in the transverse gorges which proceed from 

 it, and therefore it is not to be wondered at that they should also be 

 discovered at different localities and at different heights up to a cer- 



Brigliton Railroad near Portsmouth, and still better on those of the South- 

 western Railroad between Romsey and Salisbury, particularly near the station 

 of the latter place. It would require countless diagrams to indicate the changes 

 of this drift, and I can only express my conviction, that all the portions of it 

 which seem to be distinct are simply the results of operations of the same sort 

 during the same period of violent and turbulent action. — [October 1851.] 



