Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/260

Rh on looking at the cliff, we may notice how all the beds, as they rise westward, gradually lose their clayey character, and run into sand, which will account for this part of the cliff foundering so fast. The water percolates through the sand down to the Barton Beds, and the loose mass above is thus launched into the sea.

Below the Barton Coastguard Station rises another bed of green clay, containing sharks' teeth and the bones of fish. About a mile farther on, the High Cliff Beds emerge rich with Cassis ambigua and Cassidaria nodosa. And below them, seen in the channel of the stream flowing through Chewton Bunny, rises a bed of bright metallic-looking, green clay, the Nummulina Prestwichiana Bed of Mr. Fisher, containing sharks' teeth and some few shells. Beyond, a little to the west of High Cliff Castle, occurs the well-marked Pebble Bed, the commencement of the Bracklesham Series, containing rolled chalk flints, and casts of shells. Next follow grey sands full of fossil wood and vegetable matter, marked by' a course of oxydized ironstone-septaria. Then succeeds another Pebble Bed, and lastly appear the grey Bracklesham Sands.

We have thus gone through the principal beds, both of the Freshwater and Marine Series, as far as they are exposed in this section along the sea-coast. The fluvio-marine beds stretch away eastward as far as Beaulieu and Hythe, but their clays here contain very few shells. On the other hand, the Bracklesham Beds, trend away northward towards Stony-Cross, appearing in the valley, and cropping out again on the other side of the Southampton Water. 242