BEACHES, ETC., OP THE SOUTH OF ENGLAND. 275 



with the course and fall of a river, the wear of the materials is too 

 small, and there is an entire absence of fluviatile remains. 



The gravel, though unstratified, has in places a roughly bedded 

 structure, owing to intercalated lenticular seams of sand and brick- 

 earth or loam, which latter generally forms a separate bed 4 to 

 10 feet thick, overlying a gravel consisting of 



1. Angular chalk-flints. 



2. Subangular, and much-worn brown-stained flints. 



3. Angular, or but little worn pieces of chert and ragstone. 



4. Subangular pieces of iron-sandstone, 



5. A few small pebbles of white quartz and Ij^dianstone. 



The chalk-flints come from the Chalk hills which rise to the 

 height of 600 to 700 feet immediately behind the plain. The brown 

 flints are from the clay-gravel on the top of those hills ; and the 

 chert, ragstone, and iron-sandstone, together with the small pebbles, 

 come from the Lower Greensand on the middle slopes ; while the 

 Gault furnishes the argillaceous portion of the drift. The whole, 

 'therefore, is strictly of local origin, and from the range of hills 

 immediately north of where it now lies. 



Mr. Codrington mentions that the remains of Ehiohas lyrimi- 

 f/enius have been found in the gravel near Grange Chine, and also 

 half a mile east of Brook Chine. Webster states that numerous 

 trunks of trees, many of them 10 to 12 feet in length, and mixed 

 with nuts, were found under 8 or 10 feet of sand and gravel on the 

 top of Brook Cliffy ; and Dr. Mantell picked up near the same spot 

 teeth of Equus and Cervus, which he thought came out of the same 

 peaty bed.^ Mr. Codrington, on the contrary, found the remains 

 of wood and hazel-nuts "in a hollow in the gravel which was 

 2 ft. 6 inches thick beneath them." Both observers are, however, 

 correct. When I first visited the section in 1856 it exhibited : — 



feet 



Angular flint-gravel, sand, and peaty matter 2 



Ochreous sandy loam, with an inch or two of peaty matter, with 



twigs and leaves at its base 4 



Coarse ferruginous flint-gravel, concreted in places 3 



Stems and twigs of trees 1 



Resting on Wealden Clay. 



Yisiting the cliffs again a few years since, I met with the 

 following section, in which the plant-remains were above the 

 gravel: — 



1. Brick-earth, with stem of tree at base. 



2. Ferruginous gravel. 



3. Coarse sand. 



4. Ochreous gravel, with trunk of tree and branches of wood and nuts. 



As the brick-earth approaches the hills it becomes divisible 



1 Sir H. Englefield's ' Isle of Wight,' p. 153 ; Forbes's ' Isle of Wight,' Mem. 

 Geol. Survey (1856), pp. 7, 104. 



2 ' Geology of the Me of Wight ' (1851), p. 273. 



