252 On the Agricultural Geology of the Weald. 
is of less value than that of the ragstone hills, and the hops 
grown are, generally, of a coarser quality. 
The most noticeable products of the ragstone districts are 
hops and fruit ; very large quantities of the former are grown 
between Maidstone and Yalding, especially in the parish of 
East Farleigh. There was, some years back, a largish area 
of ragstone country unenclosed (Cox Heath), near the crest of 
the escarpment, south of Maidstone. It is somewhat remark- 
able that so much land on a ragstone soil should have beerr 
allowed to lie waste so long. 1 am not aware that any brick- 
earth occurs near there. 
On the west of the Medwav there are some very large woods 
on the higher ground of the Hythe Beds (East iVIalling, INIere- 
worth, and Great Comp Woods). Over a part of this land a 
sticky sort of " gravel " occurs, forming a wetter soil than the 
simple ragstone. It is composed of angular pieces of chert 
mixed with a reddish loamy clay, and seems to represent the 
" clay-with-flints " of the Chalk country. Probably both are 
formed in the same manner : by the gradual dissolving away 
of the limestone by rain-water, leaving the clayey particles and 
the undissolved chert. This stuff, locally mistermed "gravel."' 
is sometimes dug for garden paths, (Sec. 
The Lower Greensand country is of no great height on the east 
of the Med way, although the escarpment is a striking feature 
rising from the low and flat Weald Clay plain. On the west of the 
Medway it rises to a height of 550 feet in Great Comp Wood 7 
there is then a fall into the vallev east of Plaxtole, beyond 
which the escarpment has a general westerly rise ; some half- 
a-dozen points on the west of Sevenoaks attaining a height of 
700 feet The summit (810 feet) is on the south of Brasted, half 
a mile north of Bardolves Farm ; this is one of the very few 
places in which the Greensand escarpment attains as great a 
height as that of the neighbourin"- Chalk.* 
The porosity of the Kentish Rag gives great facilities for 
draining retentive soils above it, as the following account of a 
farm at Sevenoaks will show. " Owing to the greater part of 
the farm being naturally dry, very little draining has been re- 
quired, but that little has been effected by the following rather 
ingenious method : wells have been sunk to the depth of from 
20 to 30 feet, at which distance from the surface the Kentish 
* The highest point reached by the Chalk in Kent is within half a mile of the 
covinty boundai-y, just east of Bclsoms Hill Farm, north of Westerham, and 
nearly opposite tlie highest pftint of Lower Greensand ; the summits differing by 
only two feet— a remarkable coincidence. The highest point of the Nortk Downs 
is a little east of Flint House, near Woldingham, Surrey, and just three miles west 
of Betsouis Hill Farm : this is 870 feet. 
