﻿72 Geological Society : — 



similar tabular surface, sloping at a steeper angle towards the 

 shore-line, and cut through by the valleys of the Itchen, Hamble, 

 and Titchfield rivers remains ; and in the Isle of Wight the gravels 

 capping the flat-topped tertiary hills coincide with a corresponding 

 plain sloping northwards. 



The gravel covering these table-lands is composed chiefly of sub- 

 angular chalk-flints, with a varying proportion of tertiary pebbles. 

 Sarsen stone blocks are found everywhere; and on Poole Heath 

 granitic pebbles, and in the gravel of Portsea large boulders of 

 granitic and palaeozoic rocks are met with. In the Isle of Wight, 

 chert from the Upper Greensand and materials from the Lower 

 Cretaceous beds also occur. The colour of the gravel is generally 

 red ; and the origin of the white gravel, which often overlies the 

 red, is to be ascribed to the bleaching action of vegetable matter. 

 Brick-earth is generally associated with the gravel at all levels but 

 the highest; but the contorted appearances attributed to glacial 

 action only occur at low levels. 



No organic remains have been found in the gravel covering the 

 plains, while the valley-gravels of the district have afforded mam- 

 malian bones and teeth of the usual species. Mint implements 

 have been found at Bournemouth at 120 feet above the sea, at Ly- 

 mington, near Southampton, at 80 and 150 feet, and also along the 

 shore between Southampton Water and Gosport, at 35 feet above 

 the sea, from gravel forming part of the covering of the tabular 

 surface, and unconnected with the river- valleys. 



The gravel capping the cliffs of the south coast of the Isle of 

 Wight, in which the remains of Elephas jorimigenius have been 

 found near Brook and Grange, was probably deposited in the same 

 river-basin as the mammaliferous gravel of Freshwater ; and the cut- 

 ting back of the coast-line by the sea has given the tributaries of a 

 river which flowed by Freshwater northwards to the Solent a direct 

 outfall to the sea ; and the streams thus intercepted at a high level 

 under the changed condition of flow, have originated the Chines. 



The gravel cliff of the Foreland, at the eastern end of the Isle of 

 Wight, consists principally of raised shingle, which towards the 

 south thins out, and is overlain by a thick deposit of brick-earth, a 

 continuation of which caps the cliffs up to the chalk, and in which 

 a flint implement was found by the author at 85 feet above the 

 sea. 



General Considerations. — The marine gravel, with granite boul- 

 ders covering the south of Sussex, is continued westward by the 

 gravel with similar boulders covering Portsea Island ; and this again 

 by the Hill-head gravels, with large blocks of Sarsen stone, these 

 lower gravels being bordered on the south by the raised shingle de- 

 posits of the Isle of Wight, and on the north by the higher marine 

 gravels of Avisford, Waterbeach, and Bourne, from which the lower 

 gravel is divided by a well-marked step, extending beyond 

 Portsdown Hill to Titchfield, and traceable on the west of South- 

 ampton Water. The Hill-head gravels are considered to be an 

 estuarine deposit, of the same age as the marine gravels of Sussex 



