610 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



A layer of rag-stone, called the Big Eag-bed/' containing fossils, 

 terminates what is termed the sandstone-group." 



9th. The sixth division extends from the above down to the Gault, 

 and is about thirty feet thick. It is composed of alternating beds of rag 

 of about a foot each in thickness, with a brittle argillaceous sandstone, 

 being more dark and mottled, and differing widely both in colour and 

 substance from the beds above as it gradually approximates to the 

 Gault ; ultimately appearing as a layer of white or rubble gault, as it 

 passes into that deposit. The fossil contents are a small species of Astacus, 

 characteristic both of the sandstone and rag, bivalve- shells, including 

 Fectines, and a large species of Inoceramus, some of the hinges of which 

 are half an inch in thickness, and the valves from six to nine inches 

 long ; the hinge-teeth are often well preserved. On nearer approach 

 to the Gault the fossils are so friable as to be incapable of extraction. 



This group ends the series of deposits of the Upper Greensand in the 

 Isle Wight. 



herds. In a letter dated Niton, Feb. 9th, 1799, in the " Isle of Wight Magazine " 

 for that year, an account is given of this catastrophe : — " Dear Sir, — Yesterday I 

 ■was desired by your tenant, farmer Harvy, to go down to Pitlands, to take a 

 view of your cottage there, in order to communicate to you what follows. About 

 Tuesday last, the whole of the ground from the Cliff above was seen in motion, 

 which motion was directed to the sea, nearly in a straight line. Harvy perceived 

 the house to be falling, and took out the curious antique chairs. The ground 

 above beginning with a great founder at the base of the Cliff, immediately under 

 St. Catherine's Down, kept gliding forward, and at last rushed on with violence, 

 totally changing the surface of all the ground to the west of the brook that runs 

 into the sea, so that now the whole is convulsed and scattered about, as if it had 

 been done by an earthquake. Of all the rough ground, from the cottage upward 

 to the base of the Cliff, there is scarcely a foot of land but what has changed its 

 situation ! the arable fields are likewise convulsed, but not to the degree that the 

 rough ground is ; as far as the fence is from the Chale side, the whole may be 

 called one grand and awful ruin. The cascade which you used to view from the 

 house at first disappeared, but has now broken out and tumbled down into the 

 withey-bed, of which it has made a lake ; this last appearance is owing, I suppose, 

 to the frost, which preven s the Avater from running off. The few trees by the 

 cottage, at the base of the rock on which you had placed a seat, have changed their 

 situation, but are not destroyed. Harvy wanted, when I was there, to go into the 

 house to fetch some trifling articles, but I dissuaded him ; and very well I did, for 

 soon after the wall to the west sunk into the ground. What damage is done, 

 besides that which the house has suffered, I cannot say. The whole surface, 

 however, has undergone a complete change ; and at present there are everywhere 

 chasms that a horse or cow might sink into and disappear. This seems to be an 

 eventful period with us. Where your property is, there is a founder from the top 

 of the Cliff, in that piece of laud which Dixon rents, that has nearly covered the 

 whole with fragments of free-stone." 



