GEOLOGY OF FOLKESTONE — THE GAULT. 



207 



trophe connected with its opening out. Is it impossible that in a 

 first or final upbnrst " forty miles which erst were land," shonld " now 

 be sea;" and the similarity of the mammalian deposits in both conn- 

 tries proves that the complete severance had not taken place dnring at 

 least the earlier part of the Pleistocene era, and it is therefore certain 

 that the final disruption must have occurred only immediately preced- 

 ing, if not actually within, the limits of the human era, as now 

 ante-dated by recent discoveries. 



But let us now retmm again, after this digression, to the Gault, 

 and as we are at Lympne, we may as well vary our route, and get 

 back to the Folkestone shore through the waving corn-fields and 

 " meadows green." On our left the chalk downs rear their grass-clad 

 slopes, brown and arid — always with the same parched, hungry look, 

 whether the woods and fields below are verdant in the emerald gTeens 

 of spring, painted with the rosy hues of flowery summer, or golden 

 in the autumn's brighter tints, when 



"O'er the leaves before they fall 

 Such hues hath Nature thrown, 

 That the woods wear in sunless days 

 A sunshine of their own." 



Even in winter they change not, and when the snow is on the ground, 

 the bare slopes of the chalk- downs stand out brown and arid just the 

 same as when the hot air vibrates and flickers in the estive sun- 

 beams. 



Every now and then, in the plain below, are pits sunk in the super- 

 ficial brick-earth, and as we pass through Cheriton a tall conical 

 chimney marks the site of a tile-kiln. The clay for the tiles is dug 

 out of the Gault, and round the pug-mill are scattered heaps of little 

 black phosphatic nodules and casts of shells and crabs, the refase of 

 the washings. 



(To be continued.) 



