Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 4.djvu/298



A similar section to that at Woolwich and Loam Pit Hill may be traced round the sloping terrace that bounds the north-west and south sides of the plain of Blackheath.

On the east side the beds composing this plain appear to be covered by the clay of Shooter's Hill, an outlying summit of the London clay, like the hills of Sydenham and Highgate, and which probably at one time were all united in a continuous stratum covering the entire series of the plastic clay formation, which is now exposed between the intervals of its remaining fragments. (See map and section, Pl. 13.)



The plain of Blackheath (being a portion of the strata thus laid open,) is covered at the surface with a bed of rounded pebbles, sometimes 20 feet in thickness, which appear to be alluvial, but are of nearly the same substance with the gravel of the neighbouring strata, from which it is therefore matter of great difficulty to distinguish them. Beneath these pebbles is a bed of sand identical with