county which lies to the north of the Wandel river. A narrow belt of the plastic clay formation is found running parallel with the margin of the London clay, usually about a mile or less in width; and adjoining to and running parallel with this we find the northern extremity or verge of the range of chalk wolds or downs known as the North Downs. These clay formations would be, in their primeval state, thickly tenanted by the oak, the hazel, the ash, and the birch; in fact, we learn that even in historic times a dense forest covered the north of Surrey. Small portions of that great wood yet remain. The sites of Norwood and Forest Hill, it is true, now almost as little remind us of a forest that once existed there—the great north wood of our county—as Woodside (close by this town), which still retains the name, when the once adjacent forest has long since disappeared. We are well assured, then, that in former days this great wood densely covered the land between the Wandel and the Thames, that its trees crowded the fertile soil of the plastic clay in which the springs of the Wandel rise, and that this wood, not far from the south of our town, would cease to extend itself, since the chalk which there commences will not support the oak or other woodland trees; the furze and other indigenous bushes would rather be its tenants. If any trees were thinly scattered on the chalk downs, they would probably be the birch or the beech.
It was through such a comparatively open country that, after landing on the southern or eastern shores of our island, the first families who migrated into Surrey would penetrate over our chalk downs to the borders of that dense and wild wood to which I have alluded. And could the members of a wandering tribe be likely to find a more attractive site for their habitations than
