﻿MURCHISON FLINT DRIFT OF S.E. ENGLAND. 38/ 



waters may here, as in many other places, have been for some time 

 more or less stagnant over them, and into these I presume that land- 

 shells with mud and sediment were carried from the adjacent grounds. 



Here also, as in other places, there are more modern alluvial accu- 

 mulations, in which the remains of Wolf and Hog occur ; but these 

 are in a quite different mineral condition to the fossil bones above 

 mentioned. 



Conclusion. 



General View of the Wealden Drift Phenomena. — In his able 

 reasoning upon the data of physical disruption which characterize the 

 rocks in and around the Wealden, Mr. Hopkins has inferred that 

 there must have been one considerable, decisive, and simultaneous 

 movement, by which the original and principal dislocation of the 

 elevated mass and the distinctive features of the district were pro- 

 duced*. Admitting that the region may have been first mainly de- 

 nuded by the powerful operations to which he adverts, my object in 

 this memoir is to show, that at a period long subsequent and ap- 

 proaching much nearer to the present time, when the Weald had 

 assumed its present general configuration, and was to a great extent 

 inhabited by large quadrupeds, there took place other dislocations of 

 so decisive a character, that masses of detritus of the Tertiary rocks, 

 Chalk, and Greensand were cast off and deposited at various altitudes, 

 around the central nucleus, in the fissures of the chalk or on its 

 outward slopes. I beg the reader, therefore, to confine his atten- 

 tion to the phenomena under consideration, and not to mingle them 

 with the antecedent conditions of this region. He will recollect that 

 the memoir commenced by showing, that the whole of the central 

 dome of the Weald has been exempted from the drift to which atten- 

 tion is called, and that together with such exemption it has not been 

 found to contain any remains of the great fossil quadrupeds f. He 

 will further have noted that evidence has been cited to prove that, when 

 the drift containing the bones of the fossil animals was deposited, 

 the valleys had to a great extent assumed their present form, and 

 that the vast volumes of water which must then have occupied them , 

 had in mam/ instances a general reference to the slopes and depres- 

 sions in which the present puny rivers meander at great depths beneath 

 the surface of the ancient currents ; although in some cases the old 

 drift has been carried up the present valleys (see p. 382). 



However we may attempt to separate the superficial drift of other 

 parts of England into distinct masses formed at successive periods, 

 enough has been said to show, that there are great difficulties in doing 

 so in this south-eastern region. But here I must not be misunderstood. 

 There are, indeed, many places in the South-east of England where the 

 surface of the Chalk has been deeply eroded (as is well exposed in the 

 vertical beds of the Isle of Wight), and its cavities filled in by the 



* Trans. Geol. Soc. Lond. N. S. vol. vii. p. 43. 



f 1 still think it possible, however, that bones of the large extinct Mammalia 

 may be found under some of the local silt and loam of the Hastings Sands. 



