By the Rev. J. Wilkinson. 



59 



begins to rise from the river meadows, the gravel is much nearer 

 the surface. In the northern and higher part of the parish, fur- 

 ther from the river, there is no gravel. The subsoil is also clay, 

 but of a different character to that beneath the gravel, more porous 

 and sandy; having beneath it, at a considerable depth, the same 

 Oxford clay. Here, also, the upper soil is of varying thickness ; 

 and, as the gravel in the south, so the clay here, comes near the 

 surface, when the ground increases in elevation. The gravel is 

 known to geologists as "Mammalian drift," from its frequently 

 containing remains of those animals. It consists of debris and 

 rolled fragments of those secondary rocks which belong to the 

 lower, middle, upper oolite, and cretaceous groups, particularly 

 great oolite, forest marble, cornbrash, Kelloways rock, calcareous 

 grit, coral rag, Kimmeridge clay, green sand, chalk, and chalk- 

 flints. All these materials were furnished in the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood, by those hills which I have mentioned as encircling our 

 happy valley. This gravel contains great numbers of Ammonites 

 and Belemnites out of the Oxford clay, much rolled and worn, also 

 many land and fresh water shells. It has been extensively quar- 

 ried in the parish, for the purpose of ballasting the lines of railway 

 to Salisbury and Weymouth. So, a scientific traveller, meeting with 

 these remains at a distant station, will know where they come from. 

 There are irregular thin seams of sand in this drift, containing 

 several species of Rhizopods, or Forameniferous shells, exceedingly 

 minute, but very beautiful under a microscope. They are often 

 injured by rolling, but their very preservation shows that the de- 

 posit must have been very quietly formed. 1 At the bottom of the 

 gravel, and on the surface of the Oxford clay, are found (wherever 

 the railway cutting is sufficiently deep) numerous vertebrae and fe- 

 mora of Saurians. There also, in a portion of the glebe, were lying 

 a fractured portion of a gigantic deer's horn, and a beautiful piece of 

 ivory tusk, 2 ft. 4 in. long, with an average circumference of 9 in., 

 as white as on the day when it parted from its owner. It was 



1 For the names of these shells and for a section of our geological system, I 

 refer to Mr. Cunnington's interesting paper in vol. iv. p. 131 of the Magazine. 

 The sand seams are, it strikes me, rather too thick in the wood-cut there. 



