GeologT/ of the Neighbourhood of WeT/mouth, %c. 43 



parent in many others along the whole extent of the fault, particularly in the 

 deep combs of Elwell, Bincombe, and Sutton Pointz, that lie successively 

 adjacent to Upway on the east. 



The deep and numerous dry valleys on the surface of the chalk hills that 

 bound our district partake of the general character of such valleys on the 

 surface of the chalk formation throughout England ; and have no peculiar 

 features beyond those w^hich they have derived from enormous volumes of 

 water, retiring in all directions from the higher to the lower levels, and 

 acting at all elevations and on all points to modify the previous forms of the 

 surface of the earth. 



If we look for the cause of all this removal in any natural operations now 

 proceeding within the district, we find not the shadow of any satisfactory 

 explanation of that vast destruction of which it has been the scene. It is vain 

 to appeal to the action of rivers, for in many parts where the denudation has 

 been greatest, there is not even a streamlet, or a single spring. The greatest 

 streams we have in the district are the two insignificant rivulets of the Wey 

 and Bredy*. It is equally vain to appeal to meteoric agents, for we have a 

 measure of the total amount of their effects in the fragments accumulated in 

 the form of talus and land slips at the bottom of certain slopes and precipices, 

 and in a few small accumulations of mud and sand in the low grounds. 



The only satisfactory solution we can find is in the waters of a violent 

 inundation, and in these we think we see a cause that bears a due ratio to the 

 effects that have been produced. 



* The only river in the Vale of Weymouth is the small stream of the Wey, which, rising 

 suddenly at Upway, from a cross fracture in the Portland beds, runs about five miles from north to 

 south, into the sea at Weymouth, crossing nearly at right angles all the different formations, as well 

 as the hills and valleys that occur along its course, and receiving only a few tributary confluents 

 from the west. The Vale of Bredy is traversed by the small river of that name, running west from 

 the village of Little Bredy to the sea at Burton Bradstock. It is impossible to refer the excavation 

 of these deeply denuded valleys and the removal of the broken strata to the flood waters of such 

 streamlets, or to the agency of their waters accumulated into lakes by any imaginable series of 

 barriers, which the bursting of such lakes may be supposed to have removed. The east and west 

 portions of the elliptical valley of Sutton Pointz ofTer a good example of denudation, independent 

 of rivers. The only stream within this valley rises on its northern side, upon the line of the great 

 fault at the base of the chalk escarpment, and running direct across the shorter diameter of the 

 valley, escapes through a broad denudation, which intersects the Portland stone that forms the 

 south side of the ellipse. (See Map, and PI. II. fig. 4. 5.) We have a measure of the small 

 amount of the excavating power of this streamlet cooperating with meteoric agents in a ravine 

 five or six feet deep, and a few yards long, which the water has cut in a talus of chalk rubble, in 

 which it begins its course. A similar ravine of much greater length, and about twenty feet deep, 

 which occurs at the base of the chalk escarpment, on the south of Wantage, is there cut through 



G 2 



