LETS!HAM BEDS. 
49 
entire absence of positive evidence in favour of this view, that 
it is needless to describe them.^ 
Eastward one finds a long belt of outliers of ferruginous sands 
near the Chalk escarpment between the river Stour and 
Folkestone. These have been coloured by the Survey as Eocene, 
but they are widely separated from the undoubted Eocene of the 
London Basin. Their resemblance to the Lenham beds is so 
great, that now that the latter have been proved to be of Pliocene 
age, it will probably be necessary to follow Prof. Prestwich in 
referring them also to the Upper Tertiary series. At present, 
since only one or two indeterminable fossils have been found, 
we are obliged to confine ourselves to the stratigraphical and 
lithological evidence. 
One of the chief masses of these sands is at Paddlesworth, at a 
height of from 560 to 600 feet above the sea. These strata 
there form a slightly detached hill, and consist of 30 to 40 feet 
of ochreous and ferruginous sands, more or less argillaceous, with 
subordinate fine quartzose grits and broken beds and seams of 
iron-sandstone,—some of these forming blocks of three to four 
feet wide by one foot thick, or even more. These blocks, which 
are common in and about the hamlet, sometimes contain flint- 
pebbles and unrolled flints. The fields in the neighbourhood are 
strewed over with fragments of ironstone, and in a few of these 
I found on one occasion pieces of fossil wood pierced by the 
Teredo^ together with that which appeared to be the cast of a 
bivalve shell. Yet on the neighbouring shore at Folkestone, 
which is covered at places with blocks fallen from the top of the 
cliffs, and presenting therefore very favorable opportunities for 
examination, I have not found a single fossiI.”t Mr. Topley who 
mapped these beds, found a cast of a large bivalve {Cyprina) in 
this neighbourhood. At the northern end of the patch, between 
Mudshole and Uphill, west of Hawkinge,” he saw a pipe of 
red and yellow sand, about 4 feet thick, with an inch layer of 
white pipeclay. The red sand weathers pink. Another chalk¬ 
pit, just west, shows 4 or 5 feet of sand and iron sandstone with 
3 or 4 inches of white and mottled pipeclay, passing into mottled 
clayey sand. There are pieces of sandstone in this pit.”J 
On the Chalk ridge above Folkestone there is a large mass of 
sand, the irregular junction of which with the Chalk may be seen 
along the top of the high cliff, where there is much iron-sandstone. 
The highest ground is near Upper Coldham, and there the sand 
ends off with a marked feature and would seem to be 50 or 60 
feet thick. Sand and iron-sandstone may be well seen in the 
railway-cutting just east of the Folkestone tunnel, in the fallen 
masses of the Undercliff.” § 
* Full details will be found in Mr. Whitaker’s Geology of the London Basin. 
(^Memoirs of the Geological Survey'), vol, iv. pp. 339-342. (1872.) 
f Prestwich, op. cit. p. 324. 
X From Mr. Topley’s notes in Geology of the London Basin (^Memoirs of the 
Geological Survey), p. 342. (1872.) 
§ From Mr. Topley’s notes, op. cit. p. 342. 
E 60798. jy , 
