Page:VCH Sussex 1.djvu/39

 GEOLOGY IT is not easy to fix on any point in time at which we can say that the history of Sussex began. We commonly speak of history as commencing with the first obscure and mutilated chronicles. Or perhaps we go back, to somewhat earlier periods, for which we have only rude tradition, folklore or antiquities of uncertain age to act as guides. But history as we here understand it commences at an earlier date. It begins with the gradual building up of the solid earth on which we stand ; it deals with the rise of this land above the sea, its sculpture into hill and valley, and as a result its preparation and adapta- tion for man's occupation. We do not intend to go back, like the old chronicles, to the creation, or to start with a cosmogony. It will be sufficient for our purpose to indicate how the foundations of Sussex were laid, and to suggest what the world was like in those early days, what were its inhabitants, and what each successive period added to its mineral wealth, to its beauty, to its suitability for man. In thus treating the science of geology it is evident that attention must principally be devoted to the later geological periods, those which either lead up to or are directly concerned with the occupation of the county by man. Space will not allow us to deal fully with the earlier periods, or with the successive changes of their faunas and floras ; full information, however, will be found in the books and papers mentioned in the footnotes, which give references to the leading sources of information. Sussex in its geological structure is one of the counties most easy to understand. It is also a district each of whose surface features is inti- mately connected with the subterranean arrangement of the strata, or is due to erosive forces such as we can readily comprehend. In a general way we now find in the county four distinct types of scenery, corre- sponding with different productions, different agriculture and different settlements and history. First, on the south there is the coastal plain, a low-lying sharply-defined tract of flat land, beginning narrow at Brighton and widening westward to about 8 miles at Selsey. This coastal plain, it should be remembered, was much wider formerly, and is still rapidly wasting away under the attacks of the sea. It was probably fully a mile wider in the Roman period. Next comes a wide belt of high, undulating, bare and almost waterless chalk downs, stretching from Beachy Head throughout the county to its western border, and ending abruptly in a steep scarp overlooking the Weald. Then to the north I I I