302 
APPENDIX. 
Mr. James Parker, F.G.S., in a paper upon “The Valley of the Somme,” 
read before the Ashmolean Society at Oxford, said that : — 
“ It was not a part of his task then to explain the phenomena of the 
Somme valley ; but with that map before him he felt called on to say a few 
words as to the operations which he thought it suggested. He might add 
that the view he took was based not only on the data then before them, 
but upon the study of the levels of the Ordnance Survey in a much more 
minute degree than was represented by the figures on his diagram, and 
beyond this by many a tramp over the hills in question, sometimes in geolo- 
gical excursions, more often, archaeological. The great parallel lines of rivers, 
the furrows as it were stretching in a direction similar to that of the sloping 
chalk, suggested that the river valleys belonged to the operations consequent 
on the upheaval of the great mass of chalk from its ocean bed. He com- 
pared the result with what any one might see on any argillaceous shore, 
where the base was impervious and yet soft. The descending tide left 
channels and furrows, by which the surface was drained, but afterwards 
modified in character by evaporation and exposure to atmospheric influence. 
The great chalk expanse of a hundred miles was enormous in comparison to 
the few yards of a tidal shore, and so were the valleys of 100 and 200 feet 
depth to the little drifts of 2 or 3 inches. But this was not all. If it 
were argued that the effect was not proportionately sufficient, it might also 
be reasonably replied that the emergence of this vast chalk-bed from the 
ocean was probably not of that jmssive character which belonged to a tide 
receding from the shore ; but it might well have been the result of active 
elevation of the chalk, and such elevation could scarcely have been un- 
accompanied by fissures and inequalities which, as a rule, would lie, as 
regards their greater intensity, in lines at right angles to the main axis of 
elevation. That was just what those valleys did, and the minor fissures 
represented by the smaller ravines lay again in a general sense at right- 
angles to them, as might be seen by a glance at the Ordnance map before 
them, on which the valleys were slightly tinted. The general aspect of the 
Somme valley and its tributary ravines pointed distinctly to operations 
connected with the rising from the ocean-bed. Whether that took place in 
tertiary or post-tertiary times, whether once or more than once, were not 
questions with which he had now to deal. All he would lay stress on was 
that those rivers and valleys, and among them the Somme river and Somme 
valley, did not owe their origin to the slow excavation of river action, and 
therefore the assumption of that action, as a measure of time in connection 
with phenomena which the valley presented, was an absolute error.” 
Mr. Parker’s paper, referred to at pago 331, will be found quoted at 
length in Volumo VIII. of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute. 
