﻿MURCHISON — FLINT DRIFT OF S.E. ENGLAND. 393 



waves would produce, but of irregularly formed angular or subangular 

 flint-gravel and drift, not bedded and arranged at definite heights 

 above the present drainage, but arrested at various altitudes or lodged 

 in the lowest depressions ; all the remains which can be detected in 

 them being exclusively terrestrial, except on the southern sea-shore. 

 Occasionally, indeed, the drifted materials are found dovetailed into 

 the cavities of the fractured bones, and land-shells of existing species 

 are found in the loam commingled with the lost species of quadrupeds. 



In this view, the flint-debris of the Wealden or of the transverse 

 openings belongs to the same great turbulent era of fracture and 

 translation as the materials of the Brighton Breccia and of the slopes 

 of the South and North Downs. For, although the currents must 

 have been severally modified according to the form of the land, and 

 the detritus must have been more angular when removed to a short 

 distance only from a line of fracture, there are no evidences in the 

 South-east of England to indicate that these violent operations were 

 suspended, to be succeeded by ordinary tidal action, and then to be 

 repeated after a long interval ; or, in other words, that the drift 

 can be divided into two or more classes ; although it is so clearly se- 

 parable, as to the method of accumulation, from the much water- 

 worn sea-beaches that preceded it. Yet, whatever doubt may be en- 

 tertained on this point, and however it may hereafter be found to be 

 capable of subdivision, there can be little in affirming, that neither 

 during the operations which deposited the debris, nor after them, was 

 the Weald valley occupied by the waters of a sea, or its transverse 

 gorges by marine narrows. 



There is not a single rounded pebble along the lower edges of any 

 of the escarpments that flank the central Wealden ; still less does the 

 tract contain any fragments of marine shells ; whilst by far the greater 

 part of the detritus is just that which must have resulted from an 

 action which left the shattered debris in positions and conditions 

 which no ordinary sea would have done. Nor can it be suggested, 

 that along hundreds of miles of natural escarpments, the supposed 

 lines of deposit of ancient sea-shores are all now hidden under spoil re- 

 sulting from the diurnal action of ages. The rocks in situ are every- 

 where at or near the surface, and nowhere is there any symptom of 

 action of the sea. Again, all the fossils found inland are terrestrial. 



I dwell upon this point because it has a very wide application. I am 

 indeed bound to express my conviction, that,' if inapplicable to the 

 W T eald, the hypothesis of denudation by the sea will still less apply 

 to the much grander denudations of the Old Red Sandstone of the 

 Highland Mountains and many other similar phenomena. Whilst I 

 quite admit with Sir Charles Lyell ee that all deposition is the sign of 

 superficial waste going on contemporaneously and to an equal extent 

 elsewhere," I also believe, that the crystalline matter which has been 

 protruded to the surface of the crust of the earth in the plutonic and 

 volcanic rocks, and which certainly rose from beneath, occupies even 

 now immense superficial areas. Each of these former igneous evolu- 

 tions (many of which are now hidden from our sight by depositions 

 of younger formations and of detritus) were undeniably sudden addi- 



