348 
Isle of Wight. 
ISLE OF WIGHT. 
The greatest length of the island from E. to W. is nearly double 
its greatest width, 22 J miles to 13i. Its area is 99,746 acres, 
or 94 acres short of 156 square miles. The population in 
1851 was 50,324, or one person to 1*9 acres, a density of 
population corresponding with that of tbe average of England 
generally. 
The total amount expended for the relief of the poor in the 
year ending Midsummer, 1860, was 11,598Z. I85. ; which was 
thus distributed : in maintenance, 3734Z. ; out relief, 4593Z. 17s.; 
maintenance of lunatics, 1162/. 10s. ; salaries and rations of 
oflRcers, 1783/. 15s. ; other expenses connected with relief, 
324/. 16s. 
I. — "Principal Geological and Physical Features." 
" The fair island " is in shape somewhat rhomboidal, and 
may be compared to a lozenge, irregularly elongated to the Avest ; 
or rather to a turbot with its head up-channel. 
A range of chalk downs traverses it from E. to W., from Culver 
Cliff to the Needles. The line of extension is tolerably straight, 
except where the downs, spreading themselves to the 8.W. over 
Ganson's, Gatcombe, Chillerton, Lcmerston, and Brixton Downs, 
form in this part of their course a double ridge. On its approach 
to either extremity of the island, the chalk-range is less broad 
and less high. This is the principal geological and physical 
feature in the island. As usual with such formations, the chalk 
is pierced by rivers, in its centre by the Medina, and by the East 
Yar running through the Brading valley at that extremity. There 
are also other transverse valleys cutting through this central 
range, as at Freshwater Gate, Shalcombe, Calbourn, and Caris- 
brook. Another higher, but shorter range of chalk-hills, about 
seven miles long, extends nearly continuously from Shanklin to 
Chale, rising from the sea to the height, at St. Catherine's 
Beacon, of 775 feet. The whole of this mass of chalk has a 
slight southerly slope (an important agricultural feature), with a 
direction from E. 6° N. to W. 6° S. The two ridges converge 
on the east end of the island, the central ridge at Brading and 
Bembridge Downs trending to the S.W., the southern yet more 
abruptly to the N.E. The two ranges of chalk downs are, each 
of them, fringed by narrow beds of gault and upper greensand, 
the intervening slopes and valleys being composed of the lower 
greensand. 
The weald clay appears to the S.W. in a strip about six miles 
