Paradise Lost, Book II.”
THE WEALDEN.
The Wealden is a mass of petrified clay, sand, and sandstone, deposited from the fresh or brackish water of probably some great estuary, and extending over parts of the counties of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. This fresh-water formation derives its name from the “Weald” or “Wold” of Kent, where it was first geologically studied, and where it is exposed by the removal of the chalk, which covers or overlies it, in other parts of the South of England.
The Wealden is divided into three groups of strata, which succeed each other in the following descending order:—
1st. Weald Clay, sometimes including thin beds of sand and shelly limestone, forming beds of from 140 to 280 feet in depth or vertical thickness.
2nd. Hastings Sand, in which occur some clays and calcareous grits, forming beds of from 400 to 500 feet in depth.
3rd. Purbeck Beds, so called from being exposed chiefly in the Isle of Purbeck, off the coast of Dorsetshire, where it forms the quarries of the limestone for which Purbeck is famous: the beds of limestones and marls are from 150 to 200 feet in depth.
Nos. 4 & 5.—The Iguanodon.
(Iguanodon Mantelli, Conybeare.)
One afternoon, in the spring of 1822, an accomplished lady, the wife of a medical practitioner, at Lewes, in Sussex, walking along the picturesque paths of Tilgate Forest, discovered some objects in the coarse conglomerate rock of the quarries of that locality, which, from their peculiar form and substance, she thought would be interesting to her husband, whose attention had been directed, during his professional drives, to the geology and fossils of his neighbourhood.
The lady was Mrs. Mantell: her husband, the subsequently distinguished geologist, Dr. Mantell,[2] perceived that the fossils discovered by his wife were teeth, and teeth of a large and unknown animal.