angular nodule of the secondary chalk, the other the travelled, rounded pebble of the tertiary clay.

A large sandstone may be seen in the cutting for the road on the brow of Filmere Hill, between West Meon and Alton, with perhaps fifteen feet of clay above it. This is no bunch (in mining terms) of clay, but extends on all sides, except where valleys interfere. Indeed, I think it may be traced on the tops of the hills from the London to the Hampshire basin. At any rate, it extends in the direction of Froxfield, where many other such stones protrude from the clay, to the very border of the Wealden region. Since this was published I have added many of these stones to the horse monument. They were blown to pieces to get them out of the way of the owner's plough. They vary from the finest and purest sandstone to coarse conglomerate, and clearly show their sea-shore origin. They have been run together in nodules by water impregnated with iron flint or carbonate of lime, and in great storms have been washed out into the deep water where the clays were in deposit like the sand of the plastic clay and sand.' In the interior of these stones are many holes with loose sand and rounded pebbles which the petrifying water did not reach.

Between Rotherfield and Alton, in Brightstone

(Bridestone)* Lane, is a collection of large conglo

merate stones.

The chalk hills of the opposite coast of France

is

and Belgium, and the banks of the Seine in Nor-
mandy, are also still undenuded of their cap of
tertiary strata; and, according to my view, it
very probable that these strata of the Paris, the
London, and the Hampshire basins once united
over the chalk. But as we may almost say that
the Weald is at the present time surrounded by
tertiary strata, there is, I think, every presumption
that in former times these strata covered this
valley of denudation,' as Lyell calls it. A more
complete misnomer, however, could not be.
valley, indeed, is a valley of denudation;
denudation has passed out of the valley through a
single outlet or waterslope. For it is an essential
characteristic of valleys, trunk or branch, that

6

Every

which

* Brida, or Fraida, or Freia, or Friga, was the Saxon planet and Goddess Venus, who gave her name to Friday (dies Veneris, Venerdì). She was Christianised and canonised under the name of St. Bride or St. Bridget, or St. Fraid, and was the virgin as well as Venus. Woden was the Saxon planet and god Mercury, who gave his name to Wednesday, (dies Mercurii, Mercordì). He was canonised under the name of St. Michael, and was Mithras as well as Mercury. All that was sacred in Sabiism, that is, in the Mithraic, or planetary, or astral or Druidical, or fire worship, was divided between these two Christian saints. Bride-stones and Bride-wells (springs) are universal. The origin of the name of Bridewell for a prison, is that the Royal palace in London of St. Bride'swell in Fleet ditch, became the great city prison.

however infinite the tracery, and however countless the number of their ramifying upper inlets, each and every valley can have but one lower outlet. I speak as regards the flow of water and of denudation.

and its denu

dation passes

numerous dis

But the Weald is no valley at all. If it is any one thing, it is the reverse of a valley. It is a hill with, if not a quaquaversal dip, at least a quaquaversal waterflow; that is, its waterflow and denudation, like those of most other large hills, are carried to the sea by a great number of distinct to two seas by trunk valleys. And actually the four southern valleys of this valley of denudation' discharge themselves into the English Channel, the five northern ones into the Thames and German Ocean, while the eastern Rother forms a delta of 60,000 acres under the name of Romney Marsh.

6

6

No one can cast his eye on the foregoing map, taken from Lyell's Elements,' without seeing this fact. But I add Mr. Martin's own particular sketch to show how, according to him, the 'Weald valley' consists of the very top of the Forest Ridge;' the exact summit which separates the north and south waterslopes, and which it is the present fashion to call a portage. And if anything can be the exact reverse of a valley, a portage is the exact reverse of a valley.

The Humboldtian Keith Johnston explains the

tinet trunk

valleys.

These valleys

were made by

rain and rivers

not by the sea.

meaning of the word portage. Navigators have there, he tells us, 'the advantage' of being obliged to carry their vessels, as well as their cargoes, overland from the river on one side of the portage to the river on the other side.

But whether the Weald hill was originally capped with tertiary strata or not, it is allowed by all that it was capped by the beds which I have enumerated from the chalk to the Hastings sand, and that these beds have vanished by denudation. Therefore, before this prodigious denudation took place, and while it was taking place, the ridge above the Forest Range' was incomparably the highest ground in the region. Naturally, then, the waterflow, whether of the surface (rain and snow), or from under the surface (springs and rivers), would be from this highest point, the Forest Ridge, to the lowest point, the sea. And this waterflow is not only to the north and south, as represented by Mr. Martin; it is to the east and west also. From Tilgate Forest there is a quaquaversal waterflow to the sea, by means of many different trunk valleys, formed and graduated by the wash of rain. And the courses of this waterflow once made would be continued during the rise of the land, notwithstanding that, owing to a cause which will be explained, their starting-point might have been denuded some feet lower, not