38 Correspondence — Col. Greemvood. 



surrounded with a white soft surface of decay, they do not decay so 

 fast as the chalk. Notwithstanding the most sedulous stone-piching, 

 these flints still make their appearance. And it is the universal 

 opinion among farmers that they grow, not in size but in numbers. 

 But, however we may laugh at the idea of the growth of flints on 

 land, for the fact that surface flints increase in number it is impos- 

 sible to suppose more competent witnesses than farmers. And how 

 is the fact to be accounted for unless they are the residuum of denu- 

 dation ? When sheep in feeding off turnips have trodden the ground 

 firm and the flints loose, I have seen them raked into rows and 

 shovelled into carts. And were it not that the bulk of the layers of 

 chalk which decay into soil, so infinitely exceeds the bulk of the 

 layers of flint which decay into soil, the accumulation of surface 

 flints would soon stop agriculture in chalk districts. But as rain 

 gradually and annually washes away the soil, the plough brings up 

 fresh flints. And this increase of surface flints in number proves 

 a very universal denudation going on at this moment under our own 

 eyes." With regard to "what has become of the insoluble flints," 

 where large bodies of chalk have been removed, such as the ancient 

 cap of the Weald Hill, have we no flint gravel iDcds ? Have we no 

 beaches of flint? What of the flint-gravel of Kensington and Hyde 

 Park ? What of the flints in the enormous beaches (Dungeness for 

 instance) between Dover and the Weald at Hastings on the one 

 hand, and between Beachy Head and Hastings on the other ? These 

 witnesses once existed in the chalk which surmounted the Weald 

 Hill above Hastings. Countless myriads of tons of them have 

 travelled to and fro in all directions, and these travellers still exist 

 on our coast at Hurst Castle, at the Portland beach, at Slapton sands, 

 at Hellstone, and round the Lands-end and to the north of it. Count- 

 less myriads of tons of them have been ground into sand. And as 

 I have said in the chapter on the travelling of sea beach in " Eain 

 and Eivers," '' as the wind blows the wave flows, as the wave flows 

 the beach goes." But the wave flows up the shore obliquely and 

 down the shore straight. The water then would heap to leeward 

 unless there was an under- tow to windward. This under- tow 

 carries sand which is fine enough to be held in suspension, and this 

 is the cause of blown sand at the windward end of large beaches. 

 And from Bridport, which is the windward end of Portland beach, 

 millions of tons of sand are exported to every part of the world to 

 make " Portland Cement." This is " what becomes of the insoluble 

 flints." 



Mr. Mackintosh smashes what he calls " Colonel Greenwood's 

 hard gorge and soft valley theory." I laid down the principle that 

 '' as sure as there are alternations of hard and soft strata in the 

 course of a river or valley so sure will there be alternations of gorge 

 and alluvial flat." I first generated this theory in accounting for 

 the valleys along the stretch of the soft Weald clay, behind the 

 crorges across the comparatively hard chalk of the North and South 

 Djwns. And I said that, owing to this principle, the original single 

 Weald Hill had been cut by rain and rivers into three ridges, two 



