242 
Farming of Hampsliire. 
East Woodhav, passing one mile and a half north of Basingstoke, 
bisecting Odihain, and leaving the county at Aldershot, Avill 
separate this district from that of the chalk. 
On the higher portions of this region, and indeed throughout 
it, lie extensive areas of the Upper Bagshot and Bracklesham 
beds. Such are Penwood, Newton, and Burghclere Commons, 
Frith Common, the large block consisting of Tadley and Sil- 
chester Commons, Pamber and West Heath, and the yet more 
extensive heaths and commons about Hartford Bridge Flats. The 
mass of the land out of which these patches rise, underlying and 
surrounding them, is the London and plastic clay, which also 
borders throughout its course the chalk. I estimate this northern 
Eocene district at 180 square miles. 
To this succeeds, southwards, the great mass of chalk, here 
uniting the North and South Downs, and the Alton Hills. 
Much gravel caps the hills to the north and west of Alton. To 
the east of Alton, and for the most part in the valley of the 
Rother, appear the Upper Greensand, rather yellow and ochra- 
ceous than green, and the Gault, a chalky clay. The Upper 
Greensand also appears in a patch about Burghclere, Sidmonton, 
and Apshanger. 
. The clay is found in the chalk district covering the hill tops. 
The chalk also invades the clay to the south, rising out of it in 
the outlier of Portsdown, north of Langston and Portsmouth 
Harbours. 
I estimate the central chalk plateau, including Portsdown (14 
square miles), at 760 square miles. 
Another lower and middle Eocene district extends in a broad 
band, south of the chalk to the sea, its upper line here being 
very nearly, indeed curiously, parallel to its lower line in the 
north. 
The London and plastic clay again borders the chalk along 
the whole line, cropping out round the outlier of Portsdown. 
The chief mass of it, however, lies east of the Titchfield Brook 
to the boundary of the county, and between the chalk oi the 
South Downs on the north, and that of Portsdown on the south. 
This valley will again be mentioned. 
There succeed, first, the Lower Bagshots, a narrow strip, and 
then the Bracklesham beds. These last are extended over a con- 
siderable surface, from the west at Romsey, along the South- 
ampton Water, to the east at Portsmouth. Their chief develop- 
ment is north of the Southampton Water and west of the Hamble, 
where they form a continuous block (only intersected by the 
alluvium of the river Itchen) of 75 square miles. 
The outlying New Forest block consists of more recent and 
unprofitable deposits. This tract appears to the ordinary observer, 
