212 Mr. Richardson's Observations on the 



part still prevail. If there be variations in the conditions of Hampton Cliff, Swale 

 Cliff, and Tankerton Cliff, they consist in the quantity and not in the characters 

 of the mineral and organic contents. 



The whole of this line of coast is exposed to rapid degradation, from the encroach- 

 ment of the sea, and from the influence of land-springs, the former undermining 

 the cliffs at their base, the latter loosening and ultimately detaching, in the form 

 of land-slips, the upper portions. So rapid and extensive is the destruction thus 

 effected, that in the spring of each year, when the agents of violence are in their 

 greatest activity, many acres of ground are removed in a single week, and the whole 

 physical, outline of the coast is so altered, that the visitor of the previous summer 

 can with difficulty recognize the scene with which, so recently, he was familiar. 



With regard to Studd Hill, the facts disclosed by this unceasing progress of 

 degradation are singular and interesting. The marine character, as respects the 

 fossil contents, which, in common with the neighbouring cliffs on either side, it 

 presented in the year 1829, has been gradually becoming less prominent, while the 

 fluvio-marine nature of its organic remains has, as gradually, become more so. 

 During my visit in the autumn of this year (1839), I could not procure from it a 

 single marine shell ; the septaria had nearly disappeared ; no crustaceous remains 

 were discovered ; and the only organic products which lent to the deposit the 

 most distant pretensions to a marine origin, were a few fragments of encrinal and 

 pentacrinal stems ; the dark brown incoherent clay had also been exchanged for a 

 deep blue tenacious clay ; selenite still abounded, and with it the source of its own 

 existence, sulphu ret of iron. The absence, however, of marine fossils has been abun- 

 dantly supplied by a prodigious increase of terrestrial vegetable remains : I have 

 collected and forwarded to Mr. James Bowerbank, who is publishing the Fossil 

 Flora of the London clay, more than 500 fossil vegetable cones : fruits and other 

 seed-vessels are as various and as abundant as those obtained from the Sheppey 

 beds, and may be procured by the bushel ; while the fragments of small trees or 

 underwood, converted into pyrites, are so abundant, as to be removed for oeconomi- 

 cal purposes by barge-loads : the collection and sale of thepyritical woodis a source 

 of considerable profit to the neighbouring peasantry. The condition in which these 

 vegetable remains are found, precludes the supposition of their having been much, 

 if at all, drifted, the rounded and worn appearance of many resulting from the 

 action of the tide and shingle upon them, after they have been detached from the 

 cliff; those which are secured at the moment of their fall, preserve the smallest 

 fibres uninjured. 



No land or freshwater shells have been observed. 



Struck by the fact of this total change in the character of the organic contents 

 of Studd Hill, and notwithstanding the then unprecedented fact of mammaUan 



