CORRESPONDENCE. 



453 



Michael's) on tlicir own coast, to which such minerals could easily have 

 been conveyed, and which, in its connection with the mainland, answers 

 pretty closely to the historian's remarks ; and fnrtlicr, as I know of no 

 argument worth listenin^]^ to why tlie miners of Cornwall should have 

 transported their tin to the Isle of Wi<(ht for ex))orl;i(i()ii, — on nil those 

 several grounds, I think one may safely conclude that neither Diodonis, 

 nor any other writer of note, lias left any ovidencv whatsoever about the 

 fordabieuess of the Solent within historical times. 



The severance of this island from the mainland, it appears to mo, was 

 effected under very unusual circumstances, and at a very distant period. 

 The present channel of the Solent, being pretty nearly equally deep and 

 equally broad throughout its entire length of twelve or fourteen miles, 

 proves at once that it was not formed in the usual way of island-severing 

 channels, that is, by gradual encroachments of the sea on the two opposite 

 sides of a narrow neck of land. If so formed, the middle part of the 

 channel would naturally have been both narrower and shallower than the 

 two mouths that first admitted the tide towards it ; but this is not the 

 case. Nor are there any important indestructible obstructing rocks on either 

 side of the channel that could account for this peculiar formation. It is to 

 be accounted for, therefore, not by the excavations of a gradually ap- 

 roaching sea, but, as I shall hereafter have to attempt to show, by its 

 eing originally the trunk or outlet of a very considerable river. 



Again, at the Avestern moutli of the Solent, there is almost an immea- 

 surable accumulation of rolled flints, with which are mingled a sulEcient 

 sprinkling of fragmental fossil shells of various genera and species to show 

 us from whence the Avliole mass was originally transported. This accumu- 

 lation forms a sort of natural breakwater, two miles in length, one hundred 

 yards in breadth, and many feet in thickness, extending between the main- 

 land at Milford and a point beyond miclchannel, where Hurst Castle was 

 erected three centuries ago. Where the castle stands, this bank of flints 

 becomes expanded so as to cover a circular space of fully twenty acres. 

 Now all this enormous accumulation of flints, together with another one 

 probably much larger on the island side of the main channel, and lying 

 under the sea, in front of Alum Bay and the Needles, are formed of drift 

 and broken fossils from the Barton beds ; the fossils themselves plainly 

 pointing to the formation whence the whole mass was derived. It woidd 

 add too much to the length of my paper, to account for this vast lodgment 

 of drift around the mouth of the Solent ; neither is this needful as respects 

 the objects of my remarks : only I would have my readers to understand 

 that it depends upon the flow of tide through the channel of the Solent. 

 And when it is remembered that the annual supply of drift along the Bar- 

 ton cliffs is comparatively small, it will then be seen that it must have re- 

 quired a period reaching far back in time to gather together the vast accu- 

 mulations referred to above, and consequently they may be regarded in 

 themselves as visible and lasting memorials of the very great antiquity of 

 the separation of the Isle of Wight from the mainland. 



Nay, I \\ ill venture to hazard an opinion, even though I stand without 

 geological authorities to su])])ort me, that will ])\avc the date of the forma- 

 tion of the Solent Sea still further back in the dimness of the past ; an opi- 

 nion to which both the peculiarities of the channel itself above referred to, 

 and the geological formation of the surrounding country, bear very strong 

 testimony. "Whoever as a geologist examines the vertical strata of the 

 chalk at the Needles, nay, and throughout the whole length of the Isle of 

 Wight, and the strata of the same rock in exactly the same unusual posi- 

 tion on the bold white clill' on the J)orsetshire coast some twenty miles 



