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tunities of settling down. The coarser clays and muds take the 
place of the finer varieties and much more sand appears, all indi¬ 
cating that the river mouth was then much nearer, lhe flora 
of these beds is much richer and more varied. Palms and ferns 
are found mingled with leaves of forest-trees, Beech and Oak 
leaves occur for the first time. This may indicate that the current 
being more rapid, leaves were brought further down the stream 
before being decomposed and sinking. Mr. Gardner considers! 
that the western beds indicate an upland flora, the leaves of which 
have been shed from luxuriant forests, but those nearer Bourne¬ 
mouth suggests trees or bushes growing in a more barren tract. 
Xear the pier, as we have seen above, evidences of marshy land 
appear, with many ferns, such as Osniunda and Gleichenia. 
The river depositing the various materials it brought down 
so abundantly, maintained its bed at about the same depth, and the 
thickness of material deposited kept pace with the slowly sink¬ 
ing land. But at length the sea encroaching from the east 
reached Boscombe and between that point and Bournemouth Pier, 
during the deoosition of the Bournemouth Marine Beds, the battle 
between fresh-water and sea-water raged for many years, the 
mouth or estuary of the river varying in position with the sea¬ 
sons, floods, tides and storms. Thus were produced the irregularly 
bedded and confused layers of strata which we have described in 
preceding pages. 
This period was closed by the final victory of the sea. The 
land sank still further, the river-mouth retreated far to the west, 
and the marine sands and beach shingle-beds of the Boscombe 
Sands were formed over the Bournemouth Beds, effectively seal¬ 
ing them up to be only revealed in the then far-distant future, 
when the sea having carved out Bournemouth Bay the old river 
beds were brought to light for the modern geologists. But be¬ 
tween these two events a considerable thickness of strata which 
has now been denuded off lay over the present cliffs. Above the 
Boscombe Sands came other Bracklesham Beds, the Highcliff 
Sands, Hengistbury Head Beds, and then the Barton Series. All 
are now found to the east, and each of them has a slight 
easterly or north-easterly dip. Again over these came the Long 
Mead End Sands. None of these beds have left any traces in the 
Bournemouth district or west of it. But in the case of the next 
series—the Oligocene, which are fully developed in the northern 
half of the Isle of Wight and the opposite coast of Hampshire, 
and northward into the New Forest—we have evidence that 
they once extended over Bournemouth at least as far as Creech 
Barrow in Purbeck, for that conspicuous hill is now known to be 
an outlier of Oligocene Beds. The total thickness of these various 
beds above the Boscombe Sands is several hundred feet, and they 
were probably denuded off by sea encroachment during Miocene 
times, when England was dry land. At that time a plane of 
i “ Brit. Eocene Flora/’ vol. i., p. 17. Proc. Palfeontographical Society. 
