On the Implementiferous Gravels near London

Abstract

Introductory.-It is sufficient merely to allude to the plateaulike character which the region now constituting Northwest France and Southeast England presented at the end of the Pliocene P eriod, and to the coating of flint gravel-which the more hollow districts received during some part of the Glacial Period from the wear and tear of the Chalk then exposed on cliffsand shoals. We can proceed to consider such explanations as are generally accepted of the agencies that cansed th e excavation of the valleys, and their gra dual and partial occupation by gravels, sands, and loams of later age.t At one period the land was much higher than at present, the hundred-fathom line around the existing coast being then the shoreline. Thc British ri vers then flowed through wider tracts and with greater force in the high gr ounds, some of those on the east joining th e great European river which ran east of the Dogger Bank (then land) into the narrow Scandinavian Channel. Some joined the Somme and the Seine, along what is now the English Channel. The Severn waters went, with some Irish streams, out eastward j and the valley between the Scottish and the Irish highlands drained off to the northwest. Glaciers then occupied th e higher ground s, an Arctic climate prevailed for the most part, and the great denudation, begun ill Pli ocene times, continued until , the sea-level being changed, this area by submergence became an archip elago.