those found on a modern sea-beach." A somewhat similar gravel of rounded flints of considerable size is also noticed by Mr. Bristow as occurring in the valley of King's quay, between Ryde and Cowes.
The mass of shingle-gravel at the Foreland thins suddenly towards the south, and is overlain by 36 feet of brick-earth containing a few seams of small angular flints, which thins rather abruptly to 6 or 8 feet, and caps the edges of the Eocene beds nearly to the chalk range, reaching a height of 100 feet above the sea. A similar brick-earth, with more or less of angular flints, appears at heights up to 100 feet at many points over the Bembridge peninsula. At a point marked on the section (fig. 12), in the brick-earth a little to the south of the thick mass, I found a flint implement of the oval type. It lay within a few feet of the top of the cliff, or rather of the broken slope of marl, which at that point reaches 85 feet above the mean sea-level. It was with a few other flints which had recently become detached from the brick-earth, of which the implement still bore traces. Unlike the great majority of those from the gravel of the Hampshire coast, it is perfectly sharp in the angles of the chippings.
The brick-earth, where it thins out over the thick mass of shingle-gravel, is eroded and overlain by a drab-coloured loam, which caps the shingle-gravel throughout, and extends partly over the other deposits to be noticed further on. A little to the north of the Coast-Guard Station, where the cliff loses height, the deep red-brown shingle- gravel is overlain by a white shingle, the junction being slightly irregular, and dipping about 3° northwards. In a short distance a peat-bed appears beneath a more clayey gravel, which takes the place of the white shingle; just beyond, a bed of brick-earth is interstratified in the gravel, and about a quarter of a mile from the first peat-bed another and larger one occurs. The two deposits are so much alike in character and situation, as to render it probable that the same bed is seen at two points. At a few feet above highwater mark the Bembridge marl is covered by a few inches of dark grey clay with black pebbles, on which the peat-bed lies, and is covered by 6 inches of grey clay, succeeded by a red clayey sand passing up into a clayey pebbly gravel. The peat-bed does not much exceed a foot in thickness; it is described by Mr. Godwin-Austen, who examined it with Professor E. Forbes, as having the usual characteristics of accumulations of vegetable matter in damp situations, and containing the remains of large trees, hazel-nuts, and beetles[1]. The top of the cliff where the peat-beds are is less than 25 feet above the mean sea-level, and the gravel is much more clayey than the pebble-gravel proper, and confused in the bedding. Beyond the second peat-bed, towards Bembridge, the cliff again rises, and the gravel is again evenly stratified clean shingle.
In this section the shingle-gravel is clearly the oldest, and at the time of its accumulation the highest part must have been near the sea-level. It may with probability be looked upon as the equivalent
- ↑ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xi. p. 116.
