Xl PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



of the violent disturbances which have affected them, producing, as 

 in the Wealds of Kent and Surrey, in Purbeck and in the Isle of 

 Wight, elevations, fractures, depressions, and denudations. This 

 paper exhibits all that clearness of description which might he ex- 

 pected in the work of two such men ; but I shall not follow it 

 through the details of the older formations, contenting myself with 

 dwelling for a moment on the tertiary, as it is in this paper that the 

 author points out, that between the western termination of the chalk 

 basin of Hants and Dorset' and the great S.W. escarpment of the 

 chalk, there occur insulated patches of the same tertiary deposits 

 which fill that basin ; thereby showing that they once extended be- 

 yond their present outlines, and were probably almost coextensive 

 with the chalk. These patches, or fragments of deposits which 

 have been so nearly swept away by denuding forces, are sometimes beds 

 of rounded chalk-flint pebbles, either alone or alternating with sand, 

 brick-earth, and plastic clay ; sometimes of large blocks of a siliceous 

 pudding-stone, consisting of chalk-flints imbedded in highly indurated 

 siliceous sand ; and sometimes of deposits of angular gravel and un- 

 rolled flints with yellow clay and sand, varying in thickness from 2 to 

 20 feet, being level on the top but irregular below, as they fill up the 

 deep holes (puits naturelles) and furrows which pervade the entire 

 surface of the subjacent chalk. 



Dr. Buckland ascribed the production of the latter beds to the 

 dissolving action of comparatively tranquil water upon the chalk, by 

 which the flints have been, as it were, let loose ; and he further 

 supposes that the actual deposition, or formation, of tertiary strata, 

 including the clay with chalk-flints, closed up the chalk-pits or sa7id- 

 jnjyes, and preserved them from obliteration by atmospheric agencies. 

 Dr. Buckland points out the difliculty of distinguishing such tertiary 

 deposits from simple detritus, drift, or diluvium ; in consequence of 

 which the breccia composed of red clay and imbedded angular chalk- 

 flints of Normandy, which Dr. Buckland and Sir II. De la Beche 

 considered allied to the plastic clay, had been confounded with 

 diluvium. The importance of these remarks will become strikingly 

 evident at a future stage of this address. 



June 5, 1839. — A notice of an elephant's molar tooth found in 

 the bed of the Bristol Channel near W^atchett, and of another thrown 

 up on the Chesil Bank, Dorsetshire : this notice was printed as an 

 appendix to the paper of Captain J. B. Martin, Harbour Master at 

 llamsgate, in which he enumerates fragments of six Mammoths 

 dredged up in the British Channel, and a molar tooth found in the 

 red clay at llamsgate, — those obtained by trawling having been found 

 in depressions between chalk ridges at the bottom of the Dover 

 channel, and parallel to the chalk cliffs of both sides. 



In addition to this long list of papers embracing almost every 

 subject of geological interest. Dr. Buckland appears to have intended 

 to present to the Society a very extensive communication on the 

 *' Structure of the Alps and adjoining parts of the Continent, and 

 their relation to the Secondary and Transition Rocks of England," 

 of which he published a prospective notice in the Annals of Philo- 



