The Clay-with-Flints; its Origin and Distribution

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
I. Definition and Theories of Origin The peculiar deposit which has been termed ‘Clay-with-Flints’ is well known to most English geologists, as occurring in sheets or patches of various sizes over a large area in the South of England, from Hertfordshire on the north to Sussex on the south, and from Kent on the east to Devon on the west. It almost always lies on the surface of the Upper Chalk, but in Dorset it passes onto the Middle and Lower Chalk, and in Devon it is found on the Chert-Beds of the Selbornian Group. The existence of a red clay full of flints, lying as a soil or deposit on the surface of the Chalk, was well known to geologists in the middle of last century, such as Trimmer, Lyell, and Prestwich; and some appear to have regarded it as a residue derived from the solution and disintegration of the Chalk, but Joshua Trimmer in 1851 maintained that it and the other ‘soils which cover the Chalk of Kent’ were the result of aqueous transport. It was not until 1861 that it was described as a special accumulation or aggregation by Mr. Whitaker, under the name of Clay-with-Flints; and not until 1864 that he ventured to suggest an explanation of its formation. His belief was and still is that ‘the Clay-with-Flints is of many ages, and may be forming even at the present day, and that it is owing in great part to the slow decomposition of the Chalk

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: