William Buckland

“ At Newhaven, in the lowest part of the Castle Hill close to the mouth of the Ouse on the west side, we again found the breccia that has been described at Chimting Castle, nearly of the same thickness and in the same state and relative position between the upper surface of the chalk and the incumbent beds of sand; it differs from it only in being less firmly cemented, and appears equally identical with the oyster bed at Reading. The greater number of its flints are not much rolled. ”

“ On the inner edge of this platform at the Plumsted Common brick kilns, which are at the base of the north-east extremity of Shooter's Hill, a large section exposes the London clay, abounding in selenites and septaria. This clay is dug for brick tiles and coarse pottery. In the same field with the clay pits and on the north side of them a shaft is sunk 120 feet to the surface of the subjacent chalk, which has been extracted to the further depth of 24 feet, being the object for which the shaft is made. ”

“ The very high improbability of finding good coal above the chalk is acknowledged by all who have even the smallest acquaintance with the geological relations of the English coal mines. The presence of black vegetable matter in a state approaching charcoal in almost all our secondary argillaceous strata, has caused endless vain attempts to search for useful coal in formations where the discovery of that substance would be contrary to all experience in this country. ”

“ Beneath these pebbles is a bed of sand identical with No. 12 at Loam Pit Hill. This sand lies on a bed of plastic clay which supports the water of the well in Mr. Conybeare's garden, and of all the wells on the plain of Blackheath at no great depth; it possesses the same peculiar dark red colour, with the plastic clay of Reading, Corfe Castle, and Paris, and has been used for pottery. [6] Beneath this clay the Woolwich shell beds and subjacent thick ash coloured sand are to be seen in several parts of the sloping terrace that surrounds the Blackheath plain. ”

“ No good coal has I believe been yet found in England in any stratum more recent than the new red sandstone, or red rock marl. That of the Cleveland Moors in Yorkshire, being above lias and in the oolitc formation, is of so bad a quality as scarcely to form an exception to this position.
↑ In Chislehurst, at the north-west angle of the park at Camden Place, the section of a chalk pit displays a great thickness of the ash coloured Woolwich sand, separated from the chalk by the thin pebble bed as at Reading. ”

“ In a ravine at the east end of Plumsted Common that falls towards the Thames, the plastic clay that upholds the water of these wells and shafts, is laid open on each side of the hollow way, and throws out a line of springs at its junction with an incumbent stratum that is identical with the bed covering the plastic clay at Blackheath and Woolwich. On the east of this ravine in a deeper hollow called the King's Highway we recognise the sand and gravel beds below this plastic clay corresponding with Nos. ”

“ The oysters of No. 2 are remarkably perfect when first laid open, and seem to have undergone no process of mineralization; they soon fall to pieces by exposure to air and moisture. The chalk flints contained in it are many of them in the state of small rounded pebbles; in others the angles are unbroken. Both varieties are covered with a crust of greenish earth of the same nature with the green particles in the sand. ”

“ In a hill called David's Hill, west of the town of Reading, on the opposite side of the Kennet to that of the Catsgrove brick kilns, and about one quarter of a mile distant from them, are other large quarries of brick earth, in which many of the subdivisions which have been noted at Catsgrove are not to be recognised, and the entire thickness of some of the pits is made up of the same sands and clays as on the opposite side, but more uniformly disseminated through the whole mass, forming a kind of loam more like No. ”

“ The blue clay, No. 4, probably owes its selenites to the decomposition of its shells and iron pyrites; at present no shells are visible near the surface. Its juxta position to the London clay of the Sydenham Hills, of which it seems to be the continuation at their north-east extremity, goes far to identify it with that formation. ”

“ They are collected for the use of the porcelain manufactories. The chalk itself is extracted largely from under the sands and clays, by means of shafts and levels, to be burnt into lime. There are no septaria or concretions in any of the strata above the chalk, nor the smallest traces of animal or vegetable remains, excepting in the green sand, (No. 2.) The same barrenness of organic remains is noticed in the purest beds of the French plastic clay, and by Mr. ”

“ Plastic clay abundantly charged with the same shells as in the Woolwich pits. Bed of small pebbles chiefly of rolled chalk flints. Sandy loam and plastic clay. Blue clay full of small selenites, probably the London clay. ”

“ It contains organic remains in very few places. Is it not improbable that this bed is contemporaneous with some of the upper strata of the plastic clay formation which we find at Loam Pit Hill, at Blackheath, and in the Isle of Wight, at which last place the beds belonging to this series are accumulated to a thickness far greater than has been yet noticed in any other spot, amounting at Alum Bay, according to Mr. ”