488 On the Agricultural Geology of England and Wales. 



the hills, a tenacious clayey soil, with a small portion of flints, 

 and in some places small patches of chalk. When wet it sticks 

 like birdlime ; and when thoroughly dry, the soil is so hard that 

 it cannot be broken with the heaviest roll; difficult to work, ex- 

 cept between wet and dry, it yields good crops of wheat, beans, 

 clover, and oats, in favourable seasons, if well managed, but in 

 seasons unkindly for working it, and in dry summers, is very 

 unproductive ; 4. The hazel mould, a light soil on a clay bottom, 

 more or less mixed with flints and sand, dry and kindly for 

 wheat, barley, and clover. Beans are sometimes liable to blight 

 on it, and so is wheat after beans or peas, particularly the latter ; 

 5, Stiff clay on the tops of the hills. This soil is generally wet 

 from rains, not from springs. It has sometimes a layer of yellow 

 clay between the surface soil and the rock; 6. Flinty soils occur 

 only in small tracts in the valleys about Dover, Stockbury, and 

 Maidstone, covered with hardly any mould, difficult to plough, 

 but when well managed, and with plenty of manure, productive 

 of wheats barley, and beans. There are but small quantities of 

 gravelly and sandy soils in this district ; but in West Kent, in 

 addition to the varieties above described, there are gravelly soils, 

 about 6 inches deep, on a subsoil of rocky gravel or sand, about 

 Dartford, on the skirts of the chalk or tertiary district. 



Stevenson commences his Report on Surrey with complaints of 

 the difficulty of describing soils; because, in the first place, the 

 terms by which they are designated are so vague and loose that 

 to most readers they either convev no meaning at all, or a meaning 

 the very opposite to that intended ; and, secondly, because of the 

 great variety of soils occurring in a small space, and their rapid 

 and abrupt changes. His varieties are — 1. Marme, or cal- 

 careous loam," explained to be a deep hazel loam, lying on chalk, 

 and varying in depth with the elevation ; very deep at the base 

 of the hills, and thinning off to 3 or 4 inches, in ascending to 

 the downs. When deep there is no drawback to its fertility ; 

 when shallow, pale, and inclining to clay, it is considered back- 

 ward in the spring. It forms a narrow band, extending, on the 

 north side of the chalk hills, from Croydon to Guildford. 



2, In those parts of the range which are broken by valleys there 

 are loams not nearly so brown or so friable, much thinner, and 

 intermixed with flints. They are considered intermediate be- 

 tween No. 1 and No. 3. 



3. These soils are found more or less on all the sloping sur- 

 faces of the chalk to the east of the Mole, and cover nearly the 

 whole of them, when it contracts to a single ridge west of that 

 river. In some places the soil is nearly concealed by flints, and 

 the subsoil is in general composed of flints, chalk, rubble, or 

 chalk. If these soils were not on a calcareous base, and kept 



