Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/713

Rh examines the vertical strata of the Chalk at the Needles, nay, and throughout the whole length of the Isle of Wight, and the strata of the same rock in exactly the same unusual position on the bold white cliff on the Dorsetshire coast some twenty miles westward of the Needles, will not doubt but that the two promontories were once united, forming a rocky neck of land from Dorset to the Needles. This chain of chalk might, or might not, be so cleft in twain as to allow the rivers of Dorset and Wilts to find a passage through them to the main ocean. My opinion, however, is that they had no such outlet, but that at that far distant period, the entire drainage of more than two counties, embracing the rivers that join the sea at Poole and Christchurch, flowed through what is now called Christchurch Bay, down the Solent, and joined the sea at Spithead."

"According to this theory, the Solent was at that time an estuary somewhat like the Southampton Water, having but one opening to the British Channel, but of so much more importance than the latter as it was fed by a vastly greater flow of fresh water." "Of course, according to this view, the sea would lose its original condition as an estuary at the time when the British Channel had so far made a breach through the chain of rocks connecting the Isle of Wight with Dorsetshire as to give an opening into itself for the Dorsetshire rivers, somewhere opposite to the town of Christchurch. From that time forth the Solent would become what it is at present, losing its character as an estuary, and assuming that of a long narrow sea." . . . "The distant period at which such changes took place it would be hopeless to guess at, amid the dimness of the data on which calculations could be founded. It could not be less, however, than many thousands of years, seeing that since that time, the British Channel has not only made a broad breach of twenty miles through a chain of slowly yielding rocks, but has also pushed its way gradually across the broad extent of the Poole and Christchurch Bays."

Such is the theory of Mr. Fox, which places the probable course of events fully and fairly before our view. I see in it but little on which to comment, except that it does not appear to have sufficiently taken into account the widening of the Solent subsequently to the time of its becoming a channel of the sea; and that in a passage, which I have not quoted, Mr. Fox estimates the drainage area of the ancient river as but little inferior to that of the Thames, or Humber. Taking the basins of all the streams discharging