APPENDIX C ; STRATIFICATION OF HACKNESS HILLS 22^ 
many accouDts afforded the earliest inhahitants the most desirable 
sites of habitation but most so about the church where it is deeply 
covered with gravel. It is everywhere near to water issuing from 
springs above or below the rock. Up the interior valleys the Springs 
which are numerous flow only from the top of the rock, but about the 
village numerous springs issue from the bottom of the rock and some 
from the top of it and in the same manner by the issuing of springs 
more or less copiously m^ay the bottom and top of this stratum be 
traced in and around the Island. Sites on this rock were also desirable 
for being above the floods, and alluvial soil between it and the river and 
from their contiguity to the better land of the stratum of Oxford cJay 
lying in the slope above while the steeper parts of the hill sides covered 
with wood, afforded fuel, and sheltei and timber for constructing their 
houses, for it appears by the oak ribs of several old buildings yet stand- 
ing that they were long so constructed. The use of the valuable stone 
of this stratum in the construction of mansions & churches and of 
Museums to shelter Philosophers and their gleanings from nature, was 
left for these enhghtened times. 
The Oxford Clay lying over this rock has a parallel range all 
round the Island and up the sides of all the interior branching valleys 
forming good pastures, and where the ground is not too steep it forms 
some of the best wheat land. And in the low sides of the woods, where 
the debris of the rocks above is not too thick for the tap roots of oak 
to penetrate, it grows large and good timber. The upper part of this 
clay becomes harder and more sandy and finally so Uke the soft stone 
of the next incumbent stratum as to have no well defined boundary 
between them. 
This soft under part of the Calcareous Grit as well as the fi-ee- 
stone over it which occurs in this rock, is always in the steep hill sides 
which are mostly covered with w^oods and modern plantations. A hard 
cherty bed containing fcssil shells chiefly Ammonites, Terebratulae and 
Pectens, forms the well edged contour of the hills and much of the poor 
suiface of the Moors which all slope inwardly towards a central depress- 
ion, somew^here about Hackness Hall. On the poorest parts of the 
moors we discover among the short hng, weather bleached cylindrical 
stones an inch or more m diameter which may have been fragments 
of large Alcyonites. Beneath the soil Hes a subsoil called " a pan " 
which by its retaining water in some parts of the moors might seem 
to contain clay hardened by the oxyde of iron. The Rev. Wm. Vernon, 
