on the geology of brighton; part i

168 C. LAPWORTH ON THE DIPRIONIDlE OF THE MOFFAT SHALE.

(dJ Sub-genus Orthoqraptue s-g, nov. (Gr. orthos. straight).Polypary long, prismoid, section square.Hy droth ecre flattened, section rectangular.Example.-Orthograp tus quadrimucronatus (Hall. sp.)

The second portion of th e paper was devoted io a revision of thegenera and species of the Diprionidce of the Moffat Shal e, andseveral new species were described.'"

ORDINARY MEETING, MARCH 7TH, 1873.

HENRY WOODWARD, Esq., F .G.S., F.Z.S., &c., President , in theOhair.

The following Donations were announced :-

" Remarks upon the Present State of the Devoni.an Question,"by Horace B. Woodward, F.G.S., from th e Author.

"On the Boring at Netherfield," by J. E. H. Peyton,F.G.S., F.R.A.S., from the Author.

II Proceedings of th e Geological Section of th e British Association, at Edinburgh," by J . Hopkin son, F .G.S ., from the Author.

II Abstrac t of the Proceed ings of the Geological Society," fromthat Society.

" Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society," from that Society.

The following were elected Members of the Association :

William Bishop, jun., Esq. j G. E. Oruickshank , Esq. j Dr. W.C. Grigg; Robert H. Hoar, Esq. j Charles Henry King , Esq. j

J ohn P. King, E sq. j and J. Strat ten Thompson, Esq.

The following Paper was read :-

ON THE GEOLOGY OF BRIGHTON j P ART I.

By JA~IEIl HOWELL, ESQ.

THE SOUTH DOWNS.That port ion of the South Downs, extending from Eas tbourne to

Brighton, twenty miles long, with an average width of about fivemiles, the characte ristic features of which are of a bold and undulating cha racter, displays a magnificent line of snow-white cliffsintersected by three t ransverse valleys opening into the Weald,

• The publication of th e figures and descriptions of the new species is unavoidably deferred.

J. HOWELL ON THE GEOLOGY OF BRIGHTON. 169

through which meander the Cuckmere and the Ouse, while thethird is now riverless. This precipitous cliff-line has also" gaps,"rough pathways leading down to the beach, though in many casesdifficult- of descent. These" gaps" are, in general, the seawardoutlets to the higher range of transverse valleys which intersectthe cliffs, and at a considerable height above the sea-level-asRottingdean Gap, Saltdean Gap, Bear's Hide Gap, Hope Gap, andBerling Gap, well-known of yore to Sussex smugglers. The portion of the South Downs included within this area is studdedwith these higher level valleys and basin-shaped hollows,especially in the neighbourhood of Brighton; nearly every valley orhollow possessing a village or farmstead whose name containseither "dean" or "combe," as an affix or prefix, and situated,with one exception, within, or to the east of the Brightonvalley-as Pangdean, Standean, Withdean, Bevendean, Balsdean, Roedean, Woodendean, Ovingdean, Rottingdean, and Saltdean, Seddlescombe, Pyecombe, Combe, Ashcombe, Moulescombe,and Telscombe. Thus have the Celtic inhabitants of the Downsleft traces of their existence in the" combes," and in the riversCuckmere, Ouse, and Adur-the Saxons in the "deans," the"tons" and "ings," while Norse occupation is shewn by the" rapes" into which Sussex is divided-the Cinque Ports, " Hastings" and" Seaford," the broad sound of " oa" in road and boat,as well as " vollr," " leer," and several other words.

From Beachy Head to the Valley of the Cuckmere, and fromthe latter to Seaford, the grand and beautiful cliff-line of chalkpresents a striking, bold, and precipitous appearance. Being continually undermined by the insidious waves, and portions frequentlyfalling, these cliffs possess as fresh and dazzling a sea-frontage nowas they did when first seen by the Romans, who, from their snowwhite appearance, gave this island the name of Albion. FromNewhaven to Rottingdean they are of less altitude, and from thatplace to Brighton are much discoloured, containing patches ofCoombe-rock or the" Elephant Bed" of Mantell; and from a littlebeyond Blackroek to the boundaries of the Brighton parish, wherethe cliffs terminate, they consist wholly of the latter deposit.The last intersection of this portion of the South Downs is thevalley in which a great part of the town of Brighton stands; theRace Hill rising boldly on the east to a height of between four andfive hundred feet, the western hill being of less altitude (220 feet),

170 J. H OWE LL ON THE GE OLOG Y OF BR IGHTON.

forming the east ern rim of the Ham pshire Basin, its western rimbeing in Dorsetshire. At about one mile due north the valleyseparates into two, the bottoms of which are respectively occupiedby th e London Road and the Lewes Road. Between the two valleysrises Round Hill, whose spur, Rose Hill, is at the northern part ofth e Level. The road up this hill leads to the high est crest of th eSouth Downs, Ditchling Beacon, 854 feet above the level of thesea. 'I'hus th e eastern branch of the Brighton Valley leading toLewes separates th e Race Hill from Round Hill, while thewestern branch leading to London divides Round Hill from theW estern Hill , the latter ridg e leading to the" Devil's Dyke." TheBrighton Valley, thus bifurcating, has not been inaptly compared to the letter y. The London road follows th is course ofthe western valley as far as "The Plough" at Pyecombe, wherediverging a little to the north-west, and in companionship with theHenfield Road, it passes "The Plough" and Py ecombe Churchon th e right, and finally emerges into the W eald by the way ofDale Gate and Newtimber.

I n comparison with those of the Cuckmere and the OUBe, theBrighton Valley is of high er range , without river or st ream, exceptafter heavy rain s, when the well overflows at Patcham, and then asmall stream winds its way along the London Road to the confinesof the Brighton parish, where it is conveyed to the sea by a subterraneous channel. Previous to the construction of this sewer, in1838, this stream used to flow through the streets into the sea,flooding the basements of the houses, in conjunction with the riseand overflow of the wells, and assisted by th e drainage of the hillson each side of th e Lewes Valley, also laying a considerable portionof the L evel under water. But all this inconvenience and unhealthy state of things are now remedied by 'the main drainage,even th e rainfall finding its way into the sea in a few minutes afteralighting upon the soil.

The Lewes Valley has no outlet into the W eald, and from theheight and contour of the Downs around Falmer, I am st rongly ofopinion that it never had, for though in several places it windsinto th e heart of th ese hills, yet such windings come to an abruptconclusion at the base of steep escarpments, lik e th e one to theeast of I-IoIlingbury. Th ese are th e" combes," and may be calledlatitudinal, in contradistinction to the valleys, which are longitudinal.


Whether the most elevated of the Downs, overlooking theWealden Area, have ever been under water since their emergencefrom the Cretaceous Sea, there is little or no evidence from surfaceindications to prove; whereas there is little doubt that, duringthe Tertiary Epoch, they formed small islets of little elevationabove the sea level, while there is abundance of evidence to provefrom blocks of breccia and greywethers scattered over the surface,together with the outliers of the Plastic Clay formation that alltheir southern portion, to the height of 600 feet, has been, atvarious times, the bed of the sea; that is, if the pebbles foundamong the loam on Cissbury Hill are, what they appear to be, ofTertiary origin. The crest of Castle Hill, Newhaven, at a heightof 180 feet above the sea-level, is composed of sand and pebblesbelonging to the Lower Eocene while the breccia, the base ofthe Plastic Clay, at Seaford, extended, 50 years ago, fromthe commencement of the cliffs, capping the Chalk up to theRoman encampment, probably some 300 feet in height; whilefarther eastward the cliffs are covered with several feet of richmould, evidently a relic of the Tertiary Epoch. As the cliffscrumble and fall, this loam may be seen filling up the cracks andfissures to the depth of several feet. Now the soil of the SouthDowns, resting upon a thick stratum of flints, is only a few inchesin thickness, so that denudation, sub-aerial, and marine, has notonly planed off the whole of the Tertiary strata, but also the upperbeds of the Chalk itself down to a considerable distance. The outliers of the Eocene, which that wonderful planer, Denudation,has left us, are at Seaford, Newhaven, Piddinghoe, Brighton, Highdown, Castle Goring, and Binstead, connecting links with Felpham,where the Bognar Series crops out, plainly proving that, at least,the Lower Eocene, was once continuous in Sussex, from SeafordHeights to Bognar, and with the Middle Eocene, on to the extremity of Sussex, and through Hampshire into Dorsetshire.

The rim of this great Eocene basin, viz., the Western Hill, orMontpellier district, Brighton, is covered with the ruins of thePlastic Clay, still lying in situ two or three hundred yardsto the west, at Furze Hill, at the foot of which begins the HaveLevel formed by the retreat of the Downs inland, stretching oninto Hampshire; their whole length from Beaehey Head beingabout 53 miles, the valleys of the Adur and Allin intersectingtheir western, as the Ouse and Cuckmere do their eastern portion.

N

172 J. HOWELL ON THE GEOLOGY OF BRIGHTON.

The whole of the surface seaward of the Downs, west of Brighton,is composed of Recent or Post-Pliocene deposits, the latter overlying the Eocene at Pagham, Selsey, and Braekleshatn. From thislevel district there is a gradual ascent to the crests of the Downs,and to the escarpments overlooking the great Wealden Valley, thecoast-line being so low that the waves are ever busy at their workof destruction, the loss of land in a few years being almost incredible. The site of the church at Selsey, fonnded by Wilfred in 680,is now about one mile seaward, while parks, villages, and churchesalong the whole coast-line even to Brighton have been destroyed,and their sites taken possession of by the ruthless invader. Noone can have a clearer idea of the incessant change to which theearth is subject than he who dwells by the sea and observes itsrestless doings. Advancing, inch by inch, foot by foot, and yardby yard, does it stealthily creep into, and appropriate the earth'sdomain into its own bed, planing down and carrying away an oldworld in order to create a ncw one.

RECENT MODIFICATIONS OF THE COAST LINE.

The Queen of Watering Places, the Brighton of to-day, extending from Black "Rock to Hove Street-stretching along the valleys,climbing the hill sides and covering the hill crests-it would beuseless to describe, as everyone knows-

.. How gorgeously,A league of Palaces! she skirts the sea."

Such is new Brighton j but old Brighton was a poor miserablefishing village, standing beneath the cliffs where the sea now ebbsand flows. Lyell, in his "Principles of Geology," copying fromMantell, tells us that" in the time of Elizabeth Brighton stoodwhere the Chain Pier now stretches its iron arm across the sea."But this is an error, and coming from so high an authority shouldbe corrected, lest it becomes perpetuated, copied as it is by nearlyevery compiler of local Guide Books and Histories. The OldTown stood beneath the cliff opposite to the space enclosed betweenEast and West Streets, which, witb Black Lion Street, ShipStreet, and Middle Street, formed the New Town, and which wasbuilt long before the reign of Elizabeth; for the houses of the OldTown gradually retreated from the incursions of the sea, till afterthe year 1705 the whole of them stood upon the cliffs, and haveextended themselves east and west far beyond their ancient limits.


That land and tenements extended to a considerable distance seaward in pre-historic and even in historic times can be gleaned fromthe following records :- The "Nona Returns" (1340) inform usthat between 1260 and 1340, a period of 80 years, the sea hadswallowed up 150 acres of land in Hove and 40 acres in Brighton-a loss of 190 acres, giving an average of 2% acres for every yearthat had passed I Previous to the 14th century a few houses beganto be erected upon the cliff, but after the loss of land above-mentioned the fishermen built East Street and West Street, to whichwere in a short time added Middle Street, Ship Street, Black LionStreet, and North Street, forming thequadrangular town such as itstood down to a century ago. From 1340 to 1645 we have norecords of the encroachment of the sea, but from the latter periodto 1655 (ten years) it had destroyed 22 tenements, among whichwere 12 shops and 3 cottages with lands adjoining, still leaving113 tenements standing beneath the cliff. From this we maysafely conjecture that the loss of land, &c., during the preceding300 years, must have been something considerable. That it hadswallowed up immense tracts may beinferred from the destructionof Aldrington, adjoining Hove, not a single house of this devotedvillage having been left to mark the site where it once stood. Theruined walls of its little church, some half mile or three quartersfrom the sea shore, are the only memento of its existence, and afew years since the man at the Pay-gate was the only inhabitant theparish could boast of. Besides this, one of the tenants of the 22tenements named above also lost 8 acres, to whom, and to othersufferers, the lords of the manors of Brighthelmstone granted freshlands during the same period. Pretty conclusive proof this of thesea's doings, during the three centuries that history was silent IIn 1666 the inhabitants petitioned Parliament for assistance, andwere so reduced in 1689 that the parishes of Blatchington, Hangleton, Patcham, and Ovingdean, were ordered by the magistrates atQuarter Sessions to contribute towards the relief of the poor. Inthe great storm of 1705 -the sea swallowed up the 113 tenementsbeneath the cliff, and by this act completed the destruction of theOld Town. The waves, ever advancing, now threatened the existence of the New Town itself, by undermining and pulling down thefriable materials composing the cliff upon which it stood: Oncame the sea, down fell the cliff, carrying with it the Gun-garden,wall, and gates, in 1734, followed by the ancient fort or Block-


house in 1749. Inevitable destruction seemed impending over thetown, and a wail for help went through the land in 1722 andagain in 1757, briefs having been obtained to collect money to buildand to repair groynes to protect the inhabitants of Brighton fromthe poverty and suffering inflicted upon them by the continualencroachments of the sea. Groyne followed groyne, raising embankments of shingle on their western sides, which not only proveda barrier to the advance of the sea, but completely drove it backand compelled it to give up, in barren shingle, a small portion ofthe land which it had devoured.

By this imperfect sketch of Brighton past and present it will beat once seen that the seaward aspect or the Brighton Valley wasin past times quite different from what it is now, and that a smallriver, which eventually dwindled down into a streamlet, flowedthrough it into the sea. If the popular tradition be true thatthe town owes its origin to Brighthelm during Saxon times,Brighthelm's ton or town had then fields and meadow lands,farmsteads, and cottages, with gardens and lands, stretchingout seaward to a considerable distance, through which meandereda small river, upon whose waters the fishing crafts of that periodsailed up to the pool or harbour whose basin is still knownas Pool Valley. To the superficial observer of the presentcoast-line this statement doubtless seems improbable, but historyhas informed us of the sea's encroachments along the whole coastline, and a corroboration is to be found in the shallowness of thewater off Brighton, the depth of which for three miles seawarddoes not exceed thirty feet. The five fathom zone all along thelow coast-line to the west of Brighton, where the loss of land hasbeen still greater, extends in some places four miles seaward, whileto the east, where the coast is lined with precipitous cliffs, it keepsalmost close to the shore, especially along the ranges from Seafordto Cuckmere Haven, and from the latter place to Beachey Head.The ten fathom line, off Preston, where, tradition informs us, theBishop of Belsey's Park once reached, and where the loss of landhas been the greatest, is from ten to eleven miles from the shore;while near Beachy Head it is within one mile and a quarter ofthe cliff. Other corroborative evidence is the discovery of submerged forests along the sea-line from Selsey to near Worthing.80 that the voices of history and tradition, the shallowness of thesea's bottom, and the indisputable evidence of submerged forests,


all prove the extension of the Sussex coast for miles seaward, notonly during pre-historic, but even historic times.

GEOLOGICAL FORMATIONS.

The Geological deposits upon which the town of Brightonstands, though often considered to be solely Cretaceous, are nevertheless capable of being divided into six, belonging to the RecentEra, the Post Pliocene Era, the Eocene Era, and the CretaceousEra. We have

I. RECENT.-Silt of the Brighton Valley.II. POST-PLIOCENE.-Brick-earth, resting on Coombe-rock or

Sand. Western Brighton and Hove.III. POST-PLIOCENE.-Coombe-rock or Elephant Bed, form

ing the cliffs. Eastern Brighton, Black Rock, Base of the Silt inthe Brighton Valley.

IV. TEMPLE FIELD DEPOsIT.-Wrecks of the Eocene andChalk strata. In the Montpellier district, sloping down theWestern Hill towards the Tertiary Outlier, at Furze Hill, andHove Level.

V. EocENE.-Plastic Clay, constituting Furze Hill.VI. CRETACEOUs.-Upper Chalk, or Chalk with flints, forming

the hills, and seen on their summits and steep sides.

RECENT DEPOSITS.

The nature of the silt of a river valley can easily be predictedby observing the various formations through which the river andits tributaries flow, by the agency of which the valley is silted up.Soil and flints and chalk-rubble might then be safely predicted asforming the upper portion of the silt of the Brighton Valley, thebusy rain-fall for centuries denuding the hill sides of the Recentand Tertiary strata, together with chalk and flints, and tumblingthem down into the river to dispose of at its pleasure. If theriver flowed with a considerable fall from the Weald, we might alsoexpect to find water-rounded sandstones mingled with the silt,but their Wealden origin would be difficult of proof, as theymight be the debris of denuded strata in the more immediateneighbourhood.

Excavations in the Brighton Valley give us the followingsection :-

I.-Soil or weather-worn flints.


2.-Silt, in the upper portion quantities of flints; in the lowerboulders of sandstone.

B.-Brighton Cliff deposit: Coombe-rock or Elephant bed.4.-Chalk with veins of flint.That the Brighton Valley was at one time an estuary of the sea

into which two small rivers poured their waters, the late excavations to drain the town fully prove.

First there is a dark silt mingled -with innumerable flints resembling those of our ploughed land, which in some places reachesto a considerable depth. This is followed by coombe-rock or chalkrubble, rounded by the action of water, and embedded in this depositoccur boulders of sandstone, some of which are of immense size.Hundreds of the smallest of these stones now form borders to theflower beds by the paths in the Pavilion grounds. Mr. W onfor,Honorary Secretary to the Brighton and Sussex Natural HistorySociety, in connection with myself examined these buried memorials of past ages which speak of a time when the tumultuous wavesof an Arctic sea dashed with immense force up the BrightonValley, as far as the London Road and Lewes Road valleys, thenoutlets of the waters that denuded the Weald, sweeping its wrecksfor miles along their channels into the estuary which then coveredthe main valley. Ninety-five of these stones out of every hundredwere derived either from the Wealden or the Bagshot Series. I am ofopinion from the latter, for they are decidedly the same asthose spreadover the surface of the Sussex, Hampshire, and Wiltshire Downs,known under the appellation of " grey weathers," "sarsenstones,"or " Druid sandstones." Of the remainder some are breccia: one ofthese is a fine specimen of Hertfordshire " pudding-stone." Thereare a few of granite, but their history as being found in the valleyis somewhat apocryphal, especially as they appear to be of the Jerseyvariety, and which were probably introduced into Sussex, not bythe agency of ice, but by that of man. One of the water-rolledsandstones of immense size was dug up beneath the LewesRoad as high as Park-crescent. Everywhere throughout thevalley they are embedded at a depth of from twelve to twentyfeet. Opposite the Gloucester Hotel, after passing through thesilt to the depth of twenty feet, the workmen came to the BrightonCliff deposit, composed of small pieces of rounded chalk, havingthe appearance of the bed of a stream. At the bottom of Cheapside this deposit lies eleven feet beneath the surface, mingled with


pebbles resembling those lying upon our present beach. At thejunction of the Montpellier with the London Road the samedeposit was met with at a depth of seven feet, showing how in thehigher portion of the valley the silt that overlies the coombe-rock orchalk rubble thins off. The deposit reaches a considerable distance up the slopes of the hills, but it is nowhere visible on theirabrupt and steep ascents.

The hills on each side of the valley, and which were, previous tobeing built on, escarpments, tell a tale of when they were cliffswhose bases were laved by the waves of the sea, for even now,though rounded and worn down by the attrition of ages, theirsteepness still reveals this fact. Pool-valley points to a time whenthat locality was a pool indeed, and the Level a level of waters, fedby rivers issuing from the Weald in the one case, and from theDowns of Falmer in the other; the thickness and quality of thesilt indicating that water occupied the whole breadth of thevalley. That this era was not antecedent to the Glacial Epochmay be inferred from the fact of the silt reposing upon a bedof Post-Pliocene age. At first the valley was an estuary of thesea, into which flowed rivers possibly through fissures in the Downs,bringing down the debris of the denuded Weald, and probablytaking their rise in the Downs themselves, sweeping down theTertiary strata, mingled with the wrecks of the Chalk, which, withthe bones of the mammoth, the horse, the ox, and the deer, weredeposited in an estuary into which the sea also bore remains of thewhale, and shells of an Arctic type, till the deposit rose, layer bylayer, above the waves. Then the old sea beach upon which it reposed, and which had also sunk to receive it some 50 or 60 feet,with the hard chalk beneath it, was bodily raised from 12 to 15 feetabove its former level. Possibly, previous to this upheaval of theBrighton Oliffs was the elevation of the Downs behind them,closing the flood-gates through which the Weald might have oncepoured its waters into the valley. Then commenced the drainageof the hills, the wearing down of the cliffs, the silting up of theBrighton levels, the retiring of the sea, and the gain of fertile districts which the restless ocean has once more claimed as its own.

Geological facts tell us that during the Tertiary period, theSussex coast was submerged and elevated several times, and thesesubmersions and elevations will account for the deposition of boulders of Wealden or Tertiary origin over the surface of the Downs,


and lying in the silt of the Brighton Valley; but it will not accountfor those of granite, of porphyry, and of slate lying among theshingle of our old sea beach, and in the coombe-rock above it.Whence came 'they 1-for there are no strata of those rocks withinone hundred miles of the Sussex coast. Pebbles of the same rocks,too, lie here and there scattered among the shingle, but pebblestravel, and though slowly, might reach hither during the lapse ofages: but not so the boulders, or those immense blocks of plutonicrocks at Pagham and Selsey, some of which measure as much as 27feet in circumference. Whence came they, then, and how 1 SirCharles Lyell snggests from Normandy, or land that once mayhave existed in the south-west.In what is now the English Channel,transported hither by ice action at a time when the elevated beachin the Brighton Cliffs was a real beach washed by the waves of a.cold and stormy sea. Nor is this at all improbable when geological facts teach us that the English Channel has subsided sincethe period of the great northern pachyderms, when those mammalsbrowsed in a fertile valley where the sea now rolls its waves.Have we any proof of this 1 Let us see. Mr. Godwin-Austen,in his excellent paper "On the Tertiary Deposits of theSussex Coast," says, "If we examine the bed of the EnglishChanuel, midway between Calvados and Sussex, we meet ' withfeatures of outline; such as lines of troughs and an advancingplatform indicative of an old coast-line; from out of the mostnorthern of these impressions an isolated mass rises nearly to thesurface. The bed of the sea in this part of the Channel is remarkably clean, being composed exclusively of sub-angular shingle.I had an opportunity of examining this in 1854, during a calmday, and found the detritus in this portion of the Channel to havebeen derived partly from old rocks, Silurian of Normandy, and tobe mixed with granitic pebbles, and somepebbles of hard, apparentlyOolite sandstones, together with Chalk flints." The whole areato the cast of this, with an average depth of from twenty-five tothirty fathoms, was then dry land, while the coast-line from Englandto France was the highway along which pebbles of the Palseozoicrocks of Normandy or Brittany or lands now submerged in theEnglish Channel slowly travelled till they formed a resting-placein our old sea-beach.

A few facts showing how pebbles travel came under my noticeduring a sojourn in the Isle of Wight last summer. At Bembridge

J. HOWELL ON -THE GEOLOGY OF BRIGHTON. 179

the beach is a sparse one principally derived from the gravel of thePleistocene cliff which there caps the Tertiary deposits. Mingledwith this sparse beach lie water-rounded blocks of island rocks,derived from the Greensand, which have travelled round fromthe eastern to the northern part of the island. Some of thesestones are of considerable size, so much so as to raise the questionof how they travel. If so, go upon the sand covering theEocene clay, known as the" blue slipper," and you may unravelthe problem, for what to us at first sight seems incomprehensibleis performed by nature so simply as not only to excite our admiration, but to show us how little our minds are in comparison to themind of Him who made and governs the material and immaterialworld of which we are so minute a portion. Once upon the sandslook about you, for everywhere are seen tufts of seaweed mooredto angular blocks of I' firestone," and which seaweed has floatedthem hither from beyond the Culvers, where the Greensand liesin situ. Raise these tufts, examine them, and you will find themfirmly rooted to the stones. Then experiment upon them byplacing them in deep water, which will soon convince you that theyhave the power to buoy them up, and that the tide is fully capableof either floating or dragging them along. Should this experimentbe insufficient to settle the question, mark the trails upon thesand which the heavier stones have made, and you will be convinced that this is one of the simple processes which Nature pursues to effect her ends. You may say that these blocks areangular, while those Oil the beach are rounded by attrition. Thisproblem, too, is a simple one to solve, for when the tide drags themlandward they are tossed upon the beach by the waves. The seaweed is broken off, and there it lies rotting and blistering in thesun in every direction, while the stones are dragged to and fro androunded by attrition. This, then, is one of the thousand and onelessons to be conned npon a sea-beach.

Another fact in connection with this subject was mentioned tome by a friend, who when swimming off Brighton met with anentangled mass of seaweed, and trying to disperse it with a strokeof his hand, struck and injured it against some hard substance,which upon examination proved to be a piece of rock foreign tothis coast, to which the seaweed was attached, and by which it wasfloated lightly and easily upon the surface of the sea. He also metwith a similar occurrence when swimming off the Yorkshire coast.


This will show us that Nature is never at a loss for means to effecther purposes.

The blocks of breccia, Druid-sandstone, and lignite embedded inthe coombe-rock, are remnants of the Tertiary deposits whichonce covered the South Downs, for their ruins still cap some oftheir highest crests, as at Newhaven, Seaford heights, Highdown,and Cissbury, showing the wonderful oscillations of land andsea npon the Sussex coast since the deposition of the Cha'k.Facts teach us that these oscillations were not caused by violentcataclysms, but by that scarcely visible process still in operationalong our coast line. This is clearly illustrated in the northernportion of the Isle of Wight, which has been gradually subsidingfor the last century, and yet the sea level is the same as whenFielding landed at Ryde on his voyage to Lisbon, for he describedthat place as being inaccessible by sea, except at high water, as. thetide left a vast extent of mud too soft to bear the lightestweight. This mud is now covered with a stratum of sand manyfeet thick, to the east of Ryde, which, however, at low water isnot bare to a greater extent than was the former mud-bank. Suchare the facts mentioned by Sir Henry Englefield, in his "Isle ofWight." Five miles to the east of Ryde, at Bembridge, duringthe same period, the sea has swallowed up fields and meadows toa considerable extent, denuded the soil, laying bare the softslippery mud, over which it is now spreading a thin stratum ofsand, which is still dry at spring tides in some places, even out asfar as the Fort. Here there is the same deposition taking placeas at Ryde. Will the eastern Yar, a tiny rivulet, and the inflowing tide be equal to the task of' silting up Bembridge Havenin proportion commensurate with the subsidence evidently takingplace? Time alone can answer this question. Whilst theSolent, then, has been sinking, as did the Wealden estuary in thetimes of old, till it gradually went down to the depth of 1,600and probably 2,000 feet, the northern portion of the Isle ofWight, from St. Catherine to Dunnose, has during the sameperiod been rising. These facts illustrate the upheaval andsubsidence of the southern and northern portions of the SouthDowns during the Post-Pliocene epoch, denndation by subaqueous action going on in one plaee and deposition in the other,as shown by rolled "greyweathers" upon the surface of the hills,and sandstones in the silt of the valley.

J . H OW ELL ON T Il E GEOLOGY OF BRIGHTON. 181

PO ST P LIOCE NE BRICK E AR T H .

Wheth er tbis deposit was derived from Tertiary or W ealdenclays is an open question. Much can be said for and against boththeories. Tbe Tertiary clays might have been derived from\ Vealden denudation and the P ost-Pliocene Brick-earth of Hovefrom th e Tertiary. Wi th this deposit, however, there are mingledno greyweathers or Druid-sandstones, which may owe theirorigin either to the We alden or Bagshot Sands. The Brick-earthof the Hove Level is, in my opinion, far more recent than tha t ofth e Temple Field, and even of th e El ephant Bed or Coombe-rock.During the excavation s on the Stanford estate in the autumn of1869, a portion of th e tu sk of the mammoth was discovered in thisdeposit in a veTy friable conditi on, and placed in the local Museum.Two fine vertebrss of a whale were also dug up a few years priorto this discovery. They are now in one of the wall cases inthe room containing Mr. Will ett' s collection of Chalk fossils, havingbeen presented by that gentleman. Many fragments of shells ofexisting species have also been discovered, similar to th ose lying ina fragmentary sta te in the Coombe-rock. The upper portion of theHove Brick-earth is of a reddish brown colour, while lower down itbears a striking resemblance to the Plastic Clays, such as I sawdug up to form th e foundation of a ga rden wall at Furze Hill lastsummer. Its appearance was very deceptive, and the remarksof Sir R oderick Murchison, when speaking upon it in his pamphleton " The Flint Drift of th e South-east of England," are perfectlycorrect. " On a casual inspection," be says, " a Geologist mightdoubt wbether these were really strat a of tbe age of the Plasticand London Clays in situ, so complete ly is th eir mineral characteridentical, whilst their eroded upper surface, on which the chief massof the flint braccia is placed, would seem to separate the twodeposits. But both these signs are fallacious, for in the very heartof th ese clays I found fragments of Nytilus edulis and other seashells of existing species with th eir colours preserved, and amongthem three or four perfect specimens of Littorina littorea, a shellwhose form and strength enabled it to withstand violence." SirRoderick thinks that this is pretty conclusive evidence that theBrick- earth of Hove is th e equivalent of the Coombe-rock ofBrighton, similar remains being found in each, and that bothdeposits, geologically speaking, are of a very modern date. Duri ug


the operations to drain the town last year, I daily watched the progress of the excavations along the Shoreham-road, from HoveStreet to the Brighton beach, up to the Toll-house which separatesthe two parishes.

Opposite Hove Street, and for some distance along the road, theexcavations were through sands with scarcely a vestige of Brickearth, On arriving at Cliftonville the sands were capped withBrick-earth, which increased in depth till opposite BrunswickSquare, where the sands were only reached at a depth of 16ft.and 21ft., and the depth of the tunnel at the end of BrunswickTerrace failed to reach them at all, the Brick-earth being succeededby a dark blue clay of the consistence and appearance of rivermud. Here and there the excavations reached the Chalk, butthere was no beach either above or below the sand, and very fewpebbles mingled with" it. The old sea beach, if really present inthese strata, must lie at a: considerable distance to the north, forMantell tells us that it was met with in digging a well in theWestern Road at the depth of about 50ft. He does not point out,however, the locality, and from this circumstance I believe hewrote from hearsay; and if so, I am decidedly of opinion that noold sea"beach exists anywhere in the Western Road, as but a fewfeet of clay, here and there, has to be passed through before reaching the hard Chalk from West Street to Codrington Place, wherethe Coombe-rock crops out, and which in its turn is soon overlaidby Brick-earth. There has been so much written upon the prolongation of this old sea-beach along the western coast of Sussexfrom the appearance of a little gravel here and there that I verymuch doubt of its existence in such localities save at CopperasGap. Now, these Brick-earth beds of Hove were everywherecapped with gravel, which gravel, with the Brick-earth beneath it,the Coombe-rock of the Brighton cliffs, together with the flint-bedsunder the turf of the Downs, Sir Roderick Murchison denominatesas drift. Every observation made, and every fact discovered bythis eminent geologist in the south-east of England are made toconform to his theory of cataclysms. With him everything issuddenly broken up and submerged. Sudden oscillations andviolent fractures of the earth's crust causing tumultuous accumulations; all or nearly all of the land animals being destroyed by suchcatastrophes, followed by a season of quiescence in which the lowerportions of our Post-pliocene beds were formed by ordinary shore


action. Theories come and theories go, but the facts on which theyare founded still remain. Englishmen, especially if geologists,cannot help theorizing; it is the meat they feed on, the hobbythey ride, and without which they could not be what they are,Englishmen. The high road of geological history is macadamisedwith theory, and of a stratum too, of considerable depth, and futurepioneers will form the road of the same material till it finally girdlesthe earth.

If this Brick-earth is the result of Wealden denudation at somodern a period as the formation of the Brighton cliffs, how is itthat we do not find embedded in it Wealden sandstones? There aresandstones in the Coombe-rock, sandstones in the Silt of the valley,but none in the Brick-earth of Hove. The mass of chalk carriedaway by denudation from the Weald j the Greensands, the Gault 300feet thick, the Weald Clay of the Forest-ridge, with its uppermostbed the Horsted Sands, and in some places the Tilgate Grit andWorth Sands, are all gone, while a small portion of its clays andnearly all its Chalk flints, spread out over the surface of theDowns or washed into their cavities or fissures, remain. So saystheory, but will facts, unless distorted, corroborate it? "Brickearth," according to Mr. Godwin-Austen, "is the wash of aterrestrial surface, under a far greater amount of rainfall than wehave at present; and this, according to my own observations, iscorrect, fully believing that the terrestrial surface which formed theBrick-earth of Hove was the Tertiary and not the Wealden. Thedenuded Wealden Clays might have formed the Tertiary, but thatthe latter formed the Brick-earth of the South Downs there can bebut little doubt.

Then as to the age of the deposit- itself, facts everywhere tell usthat the Coombe-rock rests upon the Chalk, and Brick-earth uponCoombe-rock. In every excavation throughout the town where thetwo were met with Brick-earth was always the uppermost deposit. Hence the theory of one being the equivalent of the otheris unstable-Coombe-rock, and there can be no dispute about it,being decidedly the oldest deposit of the two. Throughoutthe excavations in Brick-earth few fossils were discovered.At the depth of 17 feet, in the road opposite the commencement of the western portion of Brunswick Terrace, somebones in a very friable condition and two or three teeth belongingto the horse were discovered; these were preserved by Mr. J.


Round, of Brunswick Terrace, and presented by him, through me,to the Town Museum. And this, as far as I am aware, was theonly discovery of organic remains in the excavations for the Intercepting Sewer from Hove Street to Brunswick Square.

THE ELEPHANT BED OR COOMBE ROCK.

A section of the Brighton Cliffs shows the following beds:I.-Soil.2.-W esther-worn flints.S.-Elephant Bed or Coombe-rock, 50 feet.4.-Old sea beach, 7 "5.- Sand, 3 "6.-Chalk with flints, 7 "

This is about the average thickness of the peculiar deposit uponwhich a large portion of Brighton stands, from West-street toKemp Town. It is essentially Post-pliocene, and was most probably formed about the close of the Glacial Epoch, previous to thedeposition of Brick-earth, probably by sub-aerial and aqueousagencies.

The Brighton cliff deposit, resting upon an old sea-beach, isno longer visible within the boundaries of the parish, having beenhid by the sea-wall, to which the town owes its magnificent driveand promenade. Well do I remember, in my boyhood, those looserugged cliffs, then wave-lashed and undermined, crumbling andfalling on to the shingle below.

Though the Brighton cliffs lie hid behind the sea-wall, nogeologist need regret the circumstance, for at Black Rock, a littleto the east of Kemp Town, the cliffs, composed of Coombe-rock,present fine sections. On visiting them we descend the gap, or pathdown the cliff, opposite the Abergavenny Inn. See what a massof weather-worn sharp angular flints cap the cliff. What a formidable array of them are pointed, bayonet-like, towards us onboth sides of the pathway at the commencement of the descent.Weapons, sharper than those wielded by Paleeolithic savages,guard the narrow path. Avoid their touch, lest a too closeproximity may be neither agreeable to your clothes or your flesh.Minutely observe the formation of the cliff, large flints at the top,whose name is legion, angular, not rounded, decreasing in size andnumber as we descend. The same with the chalk, from largerounded masses to small ones; from the size of boulders to that


of pin's heads. The whole mass has a yellowish buff appearance,with shades of a darker and lighter hue, according to the greateror smaller mixture of Tertiary clays with the Cretaceous fragments, while here and there, varying in size, lie blocks of ironstone,breccia, sandstone, and lignite. Pass eastward along the beach alittle farther, and at the base of this heterogeneous mass reposes anold sea beach upon an old sea-washed sand. That beach, thoughnow from 12 to 15 feet above the present one, was once level withit and probably washed by the Glacial sea, and sinking down some60 or 50 feet received the Coombe-rock or Elephant-Bed upon itsshoulders, after which the whole strata were again upheaved totheir present elevation.

Is this deposit a stratified one? Webster and Mantell answernegatively; the latter saying it is a confused mass of alluvialmaterials, varying considerably in appearance and composition indifferent parts of its course. I dissent from the first portion ofthis sentence, as in many places, especially in the middle of thecliff, the lines of stratification are very distinct. In a sea beachwe perceive the larger pebbles lying at the top which grow smallerand smaller in size as we approach the sea, ending in coarse andfine gravel, succeeded by coarse and fine sand. The same with theold sea-beach, and the same with the chalk and flints in the depositabove it.

The materials composing the cliff seem to have been the result ofwater action, gently and slowly deposited in a shallow bay or estuary, layer upon layer, while the water continued to grow shallowerand shallower, till the accumulation reached the surface. Thewater next gradually retired, bearing with it much of the finersediment, while the flints, by virtue of their gravity, remained nearthe surface, increasing century after century by pluvial action,till they finally attained their present thickness. It was, mostprobably, the same simple cause which effected the vast flint accumulations beneath the surface of our Downs.

It was the gradual work of ages from causes still in active operation, and not the result of sudden and violent cataclysms to whichthe elder geologists ascribed the wondrous changes that have takenplace both in the organic and inorganic worlds from the beginning,if there ever was such, of the unceasing revolutions of life andmatter.

Dr. Mantell, that great and original observer of the Elephant


Bed of Brighton, gives the following section, commencing fromthe base of the cliffs :-1. Upper Chalk or Chalk with flints constitutes about 6 or 8

feet of the cliff. Dipping southwards it extends to an unknown distance into the sea. The Chalk is continued behindthe cliff.

2. A bed of fine sand, from 3 to 4 feet thick.3. Shingle-bed from 5 to 8 feet thick.4. Elephant Bed, formed of the ruins of the Chalk strata, with

intermixture of clay, it is provincially termed Coombe-rock,from 50 to 60 feet thick.

In one of his later works, "The Wonders of Geology," hespeaks of this deposit as being obscurely ,stratified, showing howhis expansive mind, ever open to conviction, advanced with hisfavourite science, of which he was so bright, so able an exponent.The confused heap of alluvial materials, and the cataclysm theoryof 1822 had all vanished before the light of science at the time ofhis death, 1852.

In the old sea-beach there are boulders of granite, of porphyry,slate, and quartz rocks, with rolled masses of chalk, perforated byboring molluscs, and in the Elephant Bed, resting upon it, waterrolled masses of breccia, sandstone, limestone, and lignite; theformer being foreign to this county, while the latter are British.

Previous to the construction of the sea wall, water-rolled massesof lignite or "surturbrand " were plentifully strewn upon the beach,having been washed out of the cliffs by the force of the waves.This lignite was of a highly bituminous character, so much so thateven fishermen could not endure the bad smell caused by its combustion, resembling in its excess of bitumen some of the thin seamsof lignite in the Ashburnham beds, displayed at Netherfield, wherean old quarryman told me he had been induced to burn some, butthe smell was so offensive that it drove him out of the house.

The Elephant Bed extends more or less along the line of cliffsfrom Rottingdean to Brighton, and it is said thence west toSompting, and if we take the gravel as its equivalent, nearly toChichester. But nowhere are the same characteristics displayedwestward, save at Copperas Gap, as mentioned by Dixon in hisGeology of Sussex. In the cutting by the road the bed is therewell marked, the sand being seen in situ lying under the Chalkrubble and gravel, with rolled portions of porphyry and granite,

J. H OW El,L ON TH E GEOLOG Y OF BRIGHTON. 187

mingled with shell s of existin g species reposing upon th e Chalk.Mr. Samu el Evershed procured many of t hese shells, and th e samegentl eman discovered in a layer of clay, beneath the E lephant Bedat Black Rock, fragments of bone in a very friable state, which heconsiders to have belonged to the red-deer, and the pastern boneof th e horse. These are deposited in th e Pl eistocene case in ourMuseum. A very fine fossil tooth in the possession of the TownSurveyor, Mr. Phillip Lockwood, was found 17 feet beneath thesurface of th e southern enclosure of th e Steine, when excavatingfor th e Main Sewer in 1866. It was embedded in Chalk- rubbleor Drift, met with in many parts of Brighton, quite distinctfrom Coombe-rock, of which, however, I consider it to be th eequivalent . Tusks and teeth of th e mammoth have also beendiscovered in oth er localities in the Coombe-rock deposit . It wagin Dorset Gardens that the workmen found the molar of an elephant.This first gav e Mantell th e idea of naming the deposit in which itwas found, " The E lephant Bed." :nl ost of these remains wereembedded in Coombe-rock, resti ng upon the shingle bed. Others,and th ese were water-w orn, were found in that bed itself. In th eexca vations made for the foundations of St. Mar k's Chu rch th ebones of th e mammoth were also met with. When this man edand shagg y elephant became extinct is a matter of conjecture. Itis now certain that th at event was long after the period of theDri ft , although not, in my opinion, so recent as some suppose.

Besides th e mammoth , the remains of the horse, the ox, th e reddeer, and the whale have been found in th e E lephant Bed.An tl ers and bones of the red-deer were discovered in th e W esternRoad, in Lavender Street, and near Preston Barracks. Theshells in th e old sea-beach and in th e deposit above it are of anArctic typ e, and in a most fragmentary condition, very fewwhole ones having been met with.

Mr. Godwin-Austen, in his excellent paper " On the Terti aryDeposits of the Sussex Coast, " arg ues that Elephas primiqeniu«existed anterior to th e period when our old sea-beach was washedby the waves of th e Glacial Sea" from the rolled state of th e bonesof that animal found underneath the valley in th e deep well of thet own of Brighton, in th e foundation for th e sea-wall , and elsewherein th e coast section." But the remains in nearly every case werefound , not under th e talus, but with in that deposit ; neith er areth ey all water worn. Th e teeth in the Museum, and th e vert ebrre

188 J. HOWELL ON Tm~ OEOLOGY OF BRIGHTON.

of whales, for instance, bear not the slightest signs of water action .There is every reason to believe that the mammoth existed in thisisland durin g and long aft er the deposition of the Elephant Bed.Such common occurrences as th e discovery of a . few water-wornbones are insufficient data on which to found theories; for are notth e remains of existing animals in the Same condition plentifullyscattered among th e sh ingle of our present beaches!

The Elephant Bed, to a careful observer, gives clear evidence of its orig in of having been brought there by stream orriver, or floods of water, and deposited in layers. Ali the materialcomposing the cliff, rounded as it is by water action, clearly pointst o such a result, and yet when Section C of the Br itish Associationvisited the spot and casually examined the cliff, in August last,th ey came to the conclusion that the Elephant Bed was formedsolely by ice-action. W hat led ' th em to this belief, so opposed tothe views of Web ster, of Mantell, and Lyell, and in my opinion tothe facts, I am at a loss to conj ecture,

Lyell well expresses the view which I, as apninstaking observer,hold of the origin of that mass of deposits which now consti tut esthe Brighton cliffs.

" F irst, the southern part'of England had acquired its actualconfiguration when the ancient Chalk cliff was formed ; a beachof shingle having been thrown up at its base. Afterwards th ewhole coast, or at least, a part of it, where the Elephant Bed nowextends, subsided to th e depth of fifty or sixty feet , and during theperiod of submergence, successive layers of calcareous rubble wereaccumulated so as to cover the ancient beach. Subsequently thecoast was aga in raised, so that th e ancient shore was elevated to alevel somewhat highe r than its original posit ion."

A visit to th e spot, a little to the east of Black Rock, where theold sea-beach can be seen framed in the cliff at a height of fromt welve to fifteen feet above th e base of the present one, will, Ithink, show the correctness of these conclusions.

on the geology of brighton; part i

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