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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
HOW WERE THE EOCENES OF ENGLAND 
DEPOSITED ? 
By J. STARKIE GARDNER, E.G.S. 
I N this inquiry it will be necessary to pre-suppose that my 
readers are more or less familiar with that great series of 
Tertiary rocks in England known as the Eocene. I will, how- 
ever, briefly recapitulate the subdivisions into which geologists 
have grouped it, and their several characteristics ; and will then 
see how far the facts that have been gathered may be connected 
into a perfect chain of events, and a consecutive chapter in the 
earth’s history constructed from them. 
The Eocene, or 44 New Dawn ” age, is, in England, the newest 
formation present in great thickness, and also spread over a wide 
area. We possess more recent deposits, such as the 44 crags ” of 
Suffolk and Norfolk, and Pleistocene clays and gravels scat- 
tered here and there ; but these are not parts of any of the great 
systems of strata which form, to a considerable extent, the solid 
crust of our earth. 
Reference to geological maps of England shows that the 
Eocenes are at the present day almost confined to two great 
areas, severed from each other by Chalk ridges. One of these 
is known as the 44 London Basin,” the other as the 44 Hampshire 
Basin.” There are other 44 basins” in France, Belgium, and 
North Germany ; and in Italy, Austria, and Switzerland there 
are many local Eocene deposits containing faunas, and more 
especially floras, which have not yet been carefully separated 
from the overlying and, in those countries, better developed 
Miocene. 
It must not be supposed, however, that, in Western Europe 
at least, the Eocenes were originally deposited in isolated basins ; 
but being, as they are, the uppermost deposits and loosely com- 
pacted, they have, speaking generally, only resisted denudation 
in the areas which have remained depressed, and have been 
swept off those districts which have since been elevated into 
ridges. There is abundant evidence to show that all these 
44 basins ” are but the remains of more or less continuous sheets, 
of strata which formerly covered the intervening areas. 
Eocene Inferieure . — The lowest members of the Eocene, known 
as the Eocene inferieure of France and Belgium, are altogether 
