On the Agricultural Geology of t lie Weald. 
251 
drawn on the map for a few miles west of Asliford, beyond 
which its outcrop will be the boundary line between the Folke- 
stone and Hythe Beds. 
Hijthe Beds. — This division is in every respect the most 
important of the Lower Greensand series. It occupies the 
largest area, forms the most fertile soil, and yields more valuable 
economic products than any other. 
Throughout Kent it consists of beds of Limestone (Kentish 
Rag), and a calcareous sand or soft sandstone, known as " has- 
sock." The former is very largely dug as a building stone, and 
also for roads. The famous district of Mid-Kent owes the chief 
part of its fertility to soils overlying this division, which occu- 
pies a large area on the south of Maidstone, but narrows to the 
east and west. The soil formed by its decomposition is stony, 
containing fragments of rag, and, occasionally, pieces of chert — 
a hard siliceous rock, which occurs in thin beds, but chiefly so 
to the west of Maidstone. The soil is, of course, naturally 
drained, and the Kentish Rag country would be as destitute of 
surface water as the Chalk, if it were not that many of the valleys 
reach down to the Atherfield Clay, which always throws out 
copious springs. 
The hop gardens of the Maidstone district are almost all on 
the ragstone soil, with occasionally a thin covering of gravel 
and loam. The Hythe Beds, forming the highest land of the 
Greensand area, are not usually much covered by gravels, and 
to this rule Maidstone is no exception. There are, however, 
in that district large deposits of brick-earth, which are not 
spread out over the surface in the same manner as the brick- 
earth overlying the Weald Clay, but occur in long " pipes " of 
great dimensions. Some are known to be 50 feet deep, and 
a quarter of a mile long ; the widest is 50 yards across. These 
enormous gaps in the ragstone are filled with loam, which some- 
times contains a little gravel, but almost the whole contents are 
available for brick-making. Probably the loam from such 
*' pipes " getting spread over the surface of the adjoining rag, 
adds to its fertility ; otherwise it is difficult to account for the 
great superiority of the soil in the Maidstone district. Farther 
€ast, between the Medway and the coast, the mineral character 
of the rocks is much the same as at Maidstone ; but there 
the brick-earth pipes are absent, and the soil, though still of 
i good quality, is less productive than that on the banks of the 
j Medway. It is not maintained that the brick-earth alone makes 
I this highly productive soil, but that its admixture with the rag- 
stone soil probably has a fertilising effect. Great deposits of 
brick-earth overlie the Weald Clay around Hadlow, but the soil 
