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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2009
Few students of Geology can doubt that the elevation of the Weald has been the most important factor concerned in determining the present surface-geology of the south-east of England. It has been constantly before my own mind in all my studies of Tertiary Geology for the last ten years, as the problem to the solution of which many other preliminary questions required answers. In my first paper on Tertiary Geology, read before the Geologists' Association in 1883, I pointed out that the presence of Eocene pebble-beds in the Woolwich and Reading series and in the Bagshot series afforded strong evidence of the encroachment of the sea upon the Upper Chalk in Eocene times. This conclusion is accepted by our greatest authority on Tertiary Geology, Prof. Prestwicb. The fact alone furnishes a strong presumption that the elevation of the Weald had commenced before the close of the Eocene period; while the many outliers of the Woolwich and Reading beds at high altitudes on the N. Downs, taken along with the general absence of the London Clay there, seems to tell us that the initial elevation of the Weald hill-range had gone far enough for this to form a shore to the area of deposition of the London Clay. I have shown further, in a former volume of the Geol. Mag., that, though there is no absolute proof, there are grounds for believing, that certain outliers of sands on the N. Downs (at Chipstead, Headley, and north of Netley Heath) are more likely to turn out to be of Upper Eocene age, than of any age to which they had been hitherto assigned by different writers.
page 404 note 1 On the Bagshot Beds of the London Basin and their associated Gravels, Proc. Geol. Assoc. vol. viii. pp. 143—171Google Scholar.
page 404 note 2 Q.J.G.S. vol. xlvi. pp. 116, 167Google Scholar.
page 404 note 3 See Geol. Mag. Dec. III. Vol. V. (1888), pp. 183, 184Google Scholar.
page 404 note 4 See Mr. Reid's, Clement communication to Nature (1886), vol. xxxiv. pp. 341–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 405 note 1 See “Récherches sur le Terrain Cretacé superieur,” figures 4 and 8 on the plate at the end; also p. 113.
page 405 note 2 See (e.g.) the section (No. 3) of Ramsay's Geological Map of England and Wales.
page 405 note 3 Q.J.G.S. vol. xliv. p. 181.Google Scholar
page 405 note 4 Barrois, op. cit. p. 115.
page 405 note 5 See Topley, , “Geology of the Weald,” p. 232Google Scholar.
page 405 note 6 Topley, Ibid.
page 405 note 7 Ibid, pp. 240, 241.
page 406 note 1 Ibid, pp. 230, 232, 233.
page 406 note 2 Topley, Ibid, pp. 277, 278.
page 406 note 3 Ibid, p. 286.
page 406 note 4 Q.J.G.S. vol. xlvi. p. 156;Google Scholar see also pl. viii.
page 407 note 1 Etheridge, “Manual of Geology,” p. 652.
page 407 note 2 “Aus der Urzeit” (Oldenbourg, Munich), p. 459.
page 407 note 3 See also Ramsay, , “Phys. Geol. and Geog. of Great Britain” (5th ed.), pp. 274, 356Google Scholar.
page 407 note 4 “Elemente der Geologie” (6th ed.), pp. 695–703.
page 407 note 5 Credner, , op. cit. p. 714.Google Scholar If we follow Mr. C. Reid in relegating the Diestian to the older Pliocene, these North German deposits may be of Pliocene age also; but this is a detail which does not much affect the general argument.
page 408 note 1 Credner, , op. cit. p. 722Google Scholar.
page 408 note 2 The inference fairly to be drawn from the absence of Tertiary deposits in the Midland and Northern Counties is in accordance with this view.
page 408 note 3 See Q.J.G.S. vol. xlvi. pp. 115–117Google Scholar.
page 408 note 4 Q.J.G.S. loc. cit.
