﻿332 ME. H. EUEY ON IHE ElYEE WET. [MayiQoS, 



In this way it may be possible to regard the Southern Drift on the 

 hills above Parnham (Beacon Hill, Cassar's Camp, and Hungry Hill, 

 615 feet at the highest point) as part of the original peneplain. 

 In suggesting this I must not, however, be understood to express any 

 opinion as to the origin of these beds : I am only, as I said before, 

 seeking for the lowest point of the penejjlain, and no one is likely 

 to look for it lower than this Southern Drift. Now at this horizon 

 the Tipper Greensand would certainly be exposed along the crest of 

 the anticline opposite Farnham, perhaps as far west as the village of 

 Wrecclesham ; but I do not think that the Gault would be uncovered 

 except in the actual bed of the consequent river (Waverley Valley) ; 

 and, as the Upper Greensand is here almost as resistant as the 

 Chalk itself, there cannot at that time have been much of a 

 subsequent river of Wealden origin at this point. South of the 

 anticline, too, the Chalk would extend to within 2 or 3 miles 

 of Hindhead, while to the west of Wrecclesham it would be 

 continuous with the Hampshire Uplands. All this vast area of 

 Chalk must have had its own lines of drainage ; and, although these 

 perhaps were mainly transverse (consequent), yet the wonder is, 

 not that the Farnham River should have originated in this area, 

 but that other longitudinal rivers in the Weald should not show 

 traces of a similar origin. Perhaps when they are more carefully 

 examined they will be found to do so. 



All this, though it does not directly affect the question of 

 whether the Tisted Valley was ever continuous with the White- 

 water, renders that hypothesis much less necessary. While the 

 Farnham Valley was held to be of Wealden origin, an earlier 

 outlet for the Tisted Valley had to be found somewhere ; but now 

 it seems possible that the connection of the two valleys may date 

 hack nearly, if not quite, to the time of the plain, or beginning 

 of the present cycle of denudation. The present height of the 

 Golden-Pot pass is 584 feet above Ordnance-datum ; and, allowing 

 for recent reduction, which, with a valley on each side it must have 

 undergone, we arrive at a level not far short of that of the Southern 

 Drift, which I have here assumed (but without any fixed con- 

 victions on the subject) to belong to the first cycle of denudation. 

 As to what extension these valleys may have had before that time, 

 it is perhaps hardly profitable to speculate.^ 



A word may be added here concerning the comparative incon- 

 spicuousness of the Chalk escarpment along the Farnham Valley, 

 noted by Drew ^ and apparently connected by him with the lowness 

 of the dip ; this ought, however, to produce precisely the opposite 

 result. I believe it is partly due to the hardness of the Lower 

 -Greensand, which masks the Chalk slopes from many points of view 

 by forming an imperfect escarpment of its own ; and, in part also, 

 it may indicate that these Chalk slopes are not in their origin an 

 escarpment at all, but rather the sides of an open Chalk valley, such 

 as may be found at the present day all over the Hampshire Uplands. 



^ The great development of lateral valleys in the Tisted, as compared with the 

 Farnham , Valley should be noted , but does not necessarily imply a difference in age. 



* Quoted by W. Whitaker, ' Geology of the London Basin ' Mem. Geol. Surv. 

 vol. iv (1876) p. 358. 



