On the Structure of the Strata between the London Clay and the Chalk in the London and Hampshire Tertiary Systems

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Abstract
The preceding descriptions I believe embrace, with two or three exceptions, all the principal sections exhibiting the superposition of the basement bed of the London clay. Although, considering the extent of the line of outcrop, they are not very numerous, the intervals between them are sufficiently short to trace this deposit from place to place with considerable certainty. The details of each may vary in a few points, but they all present a general resemblance. This may not however be considered sufficient for our object—such thin and ordinary beds might be subordinate to some other portion of the Eocene series, and not peculiar to this part of them, and therefore some other proofs of their position may be thought necessary. In the first place, all the sections in the tertiary district show, by evidence of the clearest kind, that the London clay forms a nearly homogeneous mass, several hundred feet thick, of tough clay of a predominating brown colour—that throughout its whole body it nowhere presents any subordinate beds of a mineral character essentially different from that of its ordinary argillaceous type—and that its organic remains are very irregularly dispersed, abounding.in some parts and being entirely wanting in others. This clay occupies an area which is very well defined. Now wherever, without a single exception that I am aware of, the lower beds of this clay outcrop, there is found underlying them a basement bed of a conglomerate character and with or without organic remains—and these, if present, invariably belong

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