9 
LOWER or HARD CHALK, 
Frequently called GREY CHALK. 
Soil Colour > Light brown, frequently grey, with small fragments of stoney Chalk, and in 
some places almost white. 
In several places Chalk is exposed by cutting away the turf, in the form of a 
horse.* 
On the White or Malm Land, at the foot of the hills, of a dirty grey, called 
White Land . 
Consistence , Crumbly, with a mixture of whitish grey Flints Lower on the sides of 
steep hills, chiefly small rubble stoney Chalk, thinly interspersed with 
some browner fragments of soil— all very dry— at the foot of the hills 
mouldering when dry ; smeary when wet. 
Subsoil.— Colour, White, greyish white, or blue grey, small mbbly Chalk— pulverizabfe 
Malm, dry. 
Excavations, > « n . , T . , 
Hollow-wavs, \ Grey or bluish white, dry. 
Stratum, White, bluish white, or light grey ; soft stone, which moulders with frost. 
Water, Bright, transparent. 
THE bottom part of the Chalk, now under consideration, defines the boundary of that 
thick Stratum, which, though here divided into upper and under, has no distinct separation. 
It is the escarpment of this lower part of the Stratum, which forms in the west and midland coun- 
ties the abrupt edge of the Chalk hills. Its course is the same as that of upper Chalk, before 
described. The chain of hills which extend in a north-easterly direction, from Dorsetshire to the 
fens, though they gradually diminish in height north-eastward, may be viewed distinctly from 
the similar and parallel escarpment of the Oolite rocks, as well from the heights near 
Sherborne, Bath, and Cheltenham, and the whole range of C ots wold hills ; as also from the 
similar eminences in Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire. 
The more northern part of this chalky range is likewise conspicuous from the Lincolnshire 
ridge of Oolite. 
In Yorkshire, the escarpment of Chalk seems to form the western limits of the great vale of 
York. In the vicinity of New Malton, its dry surface, as at S waff ham in Norfolk, and op 
the Downs of Wiltshire, is equally famed for coursing and the sports of the field. 
* The original white horse, which gives name to the hill and rich vale adjoining, 5 miles from Wantage, is thought 
to have been cut m honour of Alfred the Great, who was born in the neighbourhood : a white horse beiiw the arms 
of Saxony. 
Two others have since been cut in the turf near Caine and Westbury, and one lately near Marlborough. 
