38 
Viewed at a distance from the west, this land has the appear- 
ance of a sloping plain of marine denudation, falling 400 
feet to the south; all the principal valleys flow southward 
to the English Channel, and show conclusive evidence of 
having been excavated by a great denudation to a depth of 
from 300 to 500 feet, destroying in some parts the continuity 
of the strata, and leaving isolated patches of greensand at a 
considerable distance from the general mass. The finer mate- 
rials of sand and clay were by denudation readily transported 
to the sea, while the solid and heavy blocks of chert remained 
on the surface of the denuded land. Then followed the glacial 
age, with its thick masses of land ice, planing and rasping the 
rugged face of the ground, and crushing and flaking the 
nodules of flint and chert by its weight and downward pro- 
gress, and forming those gentle curves on the outline of the 
landscape, which constitute its chief beauty. Then came the 
pluvial period of excessive rainfall, mingled with land-floods 
from melting ice, which re-arranged the gravel beds, leaving 
large' masses on the flat hill-tops, — sweeping other portions 
from the steep hill-sides to lower levels, and forming the thick 
gravel beds which now border the more recent alluvium of the 
valleys. Afterwards the whole country appears to have sunk 
beneath the ocean, and when it re-appeared, after its baptism, 
and the turbulent waters slowly retreated from off the surface 
of the ground, the beat of the waves, and the prolonged tide- 
washing in shallow water, left a blessing behind them, by 
depositing first the clayey subsoil, and then the less heavy 
but more fertile soil, thus rendering the land a fit abode for 
the last and best of all God^s works. 
In order that this outline of the latest geological changes of 
the surface of the country may not be considered as a picture 
drawn from the imagination, I will lean for support on the 
high authority of the late Sir Henry De la Beche, Director- 
General of the Ordnance Geological Survey, who, describing 
the greensand of the West of England, says: — ^‘‘The whole 
country is more or less traversed by faults. Gravel covers all 
the hills, and is most frequently composed of unrolled flints 
and fragments of chert, which do not appear to have been 
transported any great distance, but to have resulted from a 
dissolution of the chalk and greensand in place, leaving the 
upper surface of the chalk or greensand, as the case may be, 
corroded and uneven.-’^* 
Sections and Views illustrative of Geological Phcenomena^ by H. T. 
De la Beche, p. 5. 
