﻿1861.] 



DEEW HASTINGS SAND. 



273 



Horsted, Tilgate, and Worth Beds as having just the same characters 

 in the two districts. 



Dr. Fitton, in his valuable paper on the strata below the chalk, 

 gives some detailed sections of what was to be seen on the face of 

 the cliffs west of Hastings ; and these have come to be the more im- 

 portant from much of what was then visible being now obscured by 

 the buildings of the town of St. Leonards. Dr. Fitton did not at 

 that time connect what he observed into a system of strata ; but 

 subsequently, in a " Sketch of the Geology of Hastings," written by 

 him, he adopted provisionally the same division as Mantell did. 



The information given in the older books and papers may be con- 

 sidered as merged in these conclusions of Dr. Mantell and Dr. Fit- 

 ton : so I need not speak further of them ; for I do not wish to give 

 here a history, but an account of the latest and best state of the 

 knowledge of this formation. More lately, however, than all this, 

 Mr. Morris and Mr. Prestwich described to the Society* the cuttings 

 that were being made for the Tunbridge Wells Railway • and, though 

 they were not quite sure that they understood the succession of the 

 beds exposed in them, they gave their idea of what it might be. As 

 the part examined by them is included in that which I intend to 

 speak of somewhat minutely, I will leave the discussion of their views 

 for the present, and pass on to my own description of the rocks. 



In giving this, I will first speak of them as they occur in the 

 neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells — for many reasons a convenient 

 part to begin with ; I will then give a short account of what they 

 are on the east of that place ; and lastly, we will trace them in the 

 other direction as far westward as where the Hastings Sand dips 

 beneath the Weald Clay. 



II. In the Meridian and Neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells. 



1. Weald Clay. — In the meridian of Tunbridge Wells I find the 

 Weald Clay to consist nearly all of clay and shale of different colours, 

 blue, brown, yellow, &c. It has one or two thin bands of Paludina- 

 limestone, and some calcareous grit and clay-ironstone ; the thick- 

 ness I believe, from what I hear of borings into it at Maidstone, and 

 from what I see of the fall of ground between where its upper beds 

 occur and the outcrop of its base, to be not less than 600 feet f. 



* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. ii. p. 397. 1846. 



t The following are the grounds for this estimate. A boring at Brenchley's 

 Brewery, at the bottom of Gabriel's Hill, Maidstone, which began about at the 

 top of the Weald Clay, went through 500 ft. of clay (passing a water-bearing 

 sand at 100 ft.), and did not reach the bottom. Another boring, at Allnutt's 

 Paper-mill, Tovil, near Maidstone, began at the top of the Weald Clay, passed 

 a water-bearing sand at 115 ft., and went through, on the whole, 600 ft. of clay 

 down to a hard rock, which they did not pierce, and which very likely was the 

 top of the Hastings Sand. Again, the top of the Weald Clay at River Hill, on 

 the Greensand escarpment, is 500 ft. above the sea-level ; at Leigh (which bears 

 from River Hill in a direction at right angles to the strike of the beds) the base 

 of it is 80 ft. above the sea-level. Therefore, if the beds were flat between those 

 two places, there would be a thickness of 420 ft. ; but it is very likely that there 



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