and other Valleys of the East of England. 185 



can be shown, and it there exists ; and so far as I have been 

 able to test the inland hills, the same thing exists there also 

 invariably. Along the Suffolk and Norfolk coast short faults 

 and the broken condition of the strata attest the pressure pro- 

 duced by the North Sea circles opposing those of the Isle of 

 Wight ; and inland similar faults and breaks frequently occur. 

 The operation of the denudation has been to deepen greatly 

 all the synclinals, leaving the crests of the anticlinals in some 

 cases (most particularly in the soft strata), where the drift clay 

 remains on them, almost intact ; and in others (and most parti- 

 cularly where hard strata are operated upon) to remove the 

 broken mass occurring over the line of greatest flexure, leaving 

 the rest of the anticlinal but little denuded. That would be the 

 result of a sea bed, wrinkled as I have described, emerging from 

 the sea. The crests of the anticlinals, once clear of the water, 

 would be safe from denudation ; but that action would continue 

 in the synclinals until the land was altogether free of the waters. 

 It should also follow from this that the denudation has been 

 greatest where the troughs have been deepest ; and if we omit 

 the immediate centres of the circle, where the denudation has 

 been greatest, from the greater fracturing, and omit the actual 

 Valley of the Weald, which with the southern edge of the isles of 

 Purbeck and Portland and Wight has undergone a separate and 

 local upheaval and denudation, subsequent, as I conceive, to that 

 now considered, we shall find that the denudation has followed 

 that law. The greatest inequalities have (taking equal distances 

 from the centres) been produced where the two series of circles 

 have come into direct conflict, and the least where the angles made 

 with each other are greatest ; and comparing soft beds with soft 

 beds and hard with hard, the amount of denudation has coin- 

 cided with the extent of those inequalities. Compare, 'for 

 instance, the space between Bagshot and Chobham ridges 

 (which are arcs of the Isle of Wight circles), and the heights of 

 Hampstead (which are arcs of the Kentish circles), there diame- 

 trically opposed to each other, as an example of extreme denu- 

 dation, with the area of High Essex, where the arcs of the two 

 series cut each other at right angles, as an example of minimum 

 denudation. In the one case the whole mass of the Bagshot 

 series and part of the London clay has been removed. In the 

 other the Eocene series, with the drift beds overlying it, remains 

 intact. The New Forest is another example of minimum denu- 

 dation accompanying the cutting of the two circles at high 

 angles; and but for the subsequent local denudation of the 

 Weald interfering with the problem, the area of the South 

 Downs would probably have afforded another conspicuous ex- 

 ample of the opposite state of things. 



