1850.] AUSTEN SANDS AND GRAVELS OF FARRINGDON. 459 



quartz rock : waterworn crystals of felspar may also be detected, in- 

 dicating the loose structure of the mass of felspathic granite, or por- 

 phyry, from which they were separated. The mineralogical character 

 of the coast-line, whence the materials of the Farringdon gravel were 

 derived, is thus clearly indicated, and is one which must necessarily, 

 from the well-known distribution of masses of crystalline rocks, have 

 existed at some considerable distance from the spot to which the 

 gravel has been transported : in addition to these older fragments, 

 but much more sparingly, are fragments of secondary calcareous rocks, 

 much eaten out by perforating animals. 



The mass of gravel, wherever seen, is so identical in its arrange- 

 ment and composition that it will be unnecessary to enter into any 

 detailed description of the several pits in which it is exhibited. In a 

 large quarry due south of Farringdon, on the road leading to Furze 

 Hills, the beds rise gently to the east, which would give a trough- 

 shaped arrangement to the gravel beds as a mass : in this pit the beds 

 are much faulted. 



The coral rag is quarried 'kt no great distance to the north, and 

 from the alternations of clay we may conclude that the beds there 

 exposed are the uppermost portions of the mass ; the slope of these 

 beds would carry them below the gravels, but from the level and cul- 

 tivated surface of the ground, we have no clue as to what strata fill 

 up the interval. The ground rises gently to the tract known as 

 Cole's Pits — an area presenting numerous circular excavations, some 

 20 feet deep, in a mass of loose sand : the whole surface of the hill 

 seems to have been worked over. The antiquarian* has claimed the 

 spot as showing the excavated habitations of some early people ; 

 whilst the Farringdon tradition points it out as the site of the castle 

 of "King Cole," whose memory is preserved in a well-known frag- 

 ment of popular poetry ; but geology can countenance no fictions ex- 

 cept its own, and Cole's Pits are evidently the remains of the open 

 workings for the ironstone underlying the mass of sand : the thick- 

 ness of the sands of Furze Hills must be very considerable. A re- 

 tentive clay comes out beneath their mass on the east, and in the 

 village of Fernham the compact gravel beds are again exhibited : we 

 did not proceed further, but returned to Farringdon by the west side 

 of the Furze Hills. Mr. Sharpe, Mr. Prestwich, and Mr. Tylor 

 examined the underlying clays, used for brick-making at Ringtail 

 Farm on the west, and Prof. Forbes collected from a band of fos- 

 siliferous ironstone and conglomerate which occurs beneath the upper 

 sands. 



The distance from Fernham to the escarpment of the chalk is 

 three miles, and so far the Farringdon sands and gravels had been 

 seen only as independent beds superior to a mass of clay above the 

 coral rag. The country beside the sands of Fernham and iVlfred's 

 Hill is a low tract of clay, — a portion of this must evidently be 



* The pits are 273 in number. Barrington supposes this to have been " a con- 

 siderable city of the Britons, and, at five souls in a pit, to have contained 1400 

 inhabitants." — Archaeol. v. 7. 



VOL. VI. PART I. 2 K 



