﻿MURCHISON — FLINT DRIFT OF S.E. ENGLAND. 



381 



55 



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oo 53 

 «te 53 



towards the north and west, are covered with loam and brick-earth, 

 occasionally fertile enough to constitute hop-grounds ; whilst the sur- 

 face is sprinkled with large broken 

 chalk-flints (see fig. 9). In passing 

 to the south-eastern slopes which flank 

 the valley of the Medway, this loam 

 with flints passes into a gravel, the 

 flints become smaller, and for the 

 space of a mile and a half are spread 

 oat in what the country-people call 

 the " plains," which are, in fact, pla- 

 teaux GO or 80 feet above the adja- 

 cent valley of the Medway. This 

 drift has been largely excavated at 

 Hever Lodge Farm*, where it consists 

 of small flints of yellow, red, and 

 white colours, the greater number 

 angular, and fragments of clinkers 

 and chert of the Greensand, with 

 some rounded black pebbles of flint, 

 similar to those which have been de- 

 rived from the older tertiary strata 

 *o*!£j "* "o | -^1 ^d 1- ? and have been before alluded to. These 



are mixed up in foxy- coloured sand 

 and loam, and where iron has predo- 

 minated the fragments are occasion- 

 ally cemented into the concrete here, 

 6d2j as in the west of Sussex, called "rag- 

 •§h I. stone." These accumulations attain 

 g '3 more and more of a stratified and 

 water-worn character as they pass 

 8-9 from the summit of the dome or 

 3 1 plateau to the valley of the Medway. 

 ja'g On the higher grounds the loam is 

 «g | entirely unbedded and the flints are 

 <b >. large and angular ; further on they 

 ° g diminish in size and are associated 

 •~ 8 in the above-mentioned gravel ; and 

 |3 >» still farther on, in the flats west of 

 ^ § Tunbridge, the accumulation is one 

 [I ' I J of still finer gravel, which has a rude 



stratification. 



The drift of Hever Lodge occupies a remarkable position in being 

 about nine miles distant from the nearest chalk-escarpment of the North 

 Downs whence the flints in it could have been derived. I may also 

 mention, that the spot is nearly to the south of the N. and S. frac- 

 ture in the chalk in which the Darent flows. It is, however, sepa- 

 rated from the North Downs in that parallel by the lofty hills of 



* Fields were here cut into to the depth of 14 feet and over a surface of 12 or 

 14 acres for the extraction of ballast for the South-Eastern Railroad. 

 VOL. VII. PART I. 2 E 



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