250 On the Agricultural Geology of the Weald. 
loose sand, generally light in colour, but sometimes redj as at 
i?efZliill. At Folkestone, and for a few miles westwards, it 
contains beds of a hard calcareous sandstone, and much of the 
sand itself is somewhat calcareous. To this cause is probably 
owing the superior fertility of the land overlying this division 
between Ashford and Folkestone. To the west of Ashford 
there are, at intervals, commons and heaths on this bed, and here 
the calcareous sand and sandstone are absent. This light land 
might be vastly improved by marling from the Middle Gault, in 
which there is much carbonate of lime. 
' The outcrop in Kent varies in breadth from one-third of a 
mile to one mile ; rarely exceeding the latter, excepting on the 
border of the Medway, south of Snodland, where it is two miles 
broad. It again makes a wider spread than usual on the south 
of Merstham, from whence to its great development in West 
Surrey its outcrop is narrowed. A large " outlier " occurs on 
the south-east of Guildford, forming the high land of Black- 
heath, and Farley Heath. The largest and least fertile area 
formed by these sands is that on the south and south-east of 
Farnham, where above 30 square miles of them were formerly 
chiefly in common and heath, and a large part of which is still 
uninclosed. The heath land of the Folkestone Beds is here 
not plainly marked off from the almost equally sterile land of 
the Hythe Beds. The total area occupied by Lower Greensand 
west of Guildford, south of the Hog's Back and including 
Woolmer Forest, is over 130 square miles. 
The most noticeable product of this upper division is a very 
hard, dark red, or brown ferruginous sandstone, occurring 
chiefly in irregular veins and beds throughout the sand. It is 
much used for road stone and rough paving. 
The Folkestone Beds retain pretty much the same character 
in Hants and Sussex, and are marked throughout their whole 
extent by heaths and commons. 
The Sandgate Beds form generally a depression between the 
harder divisions above and below. As a whole they are clayey, 
and generally form wet springy ground which requires drainage. 
But they are not stiff in the sense that the Gault or Weald Clay 
are so. Compared with these the ground of the Sandgate Beds 
would be, generally, only a stiffish loam. There are in places 
small areas of stifTer soil ; but there are, on the other hand, larger 
areas which are at most only loamy sands. 
Fuller's Earth has been got from these beds in the neigh- 
bourhood of Nutfield for a great length of time. It is here 
most largely developed, but also occurs, and was formerly 
worked, near Maidstone. Traces of this division are seen more 
or less throughout the Greensand range of Kent, but it is only 
