Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 27.djvu/210

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Fig. 2.-Diagram of a portion of the upper part of the Cliff west of Beer Head.

be difficult to draw the actual cliff with its succession of irregular projections.

The junction of the Chalk without flints and the Greensand may be seen amongst the fallen masses west of the landslip (of 1790). In the cliff the nodular Lower Chalk is underlain by, and passes into, a calcareous bed (4 of fig. 2) full of green grains and quartz-grains, with lighter- coloured harder nodular lumps and small hard brown nodules, about five feet thick ; below this is a hard brown and greenish nodular layer, also with quartz-grains, forming the top of the succeeding bed (5 of fig. 2), which is like that above (but whiter and with fewer grains), and five feet thick ; it is underlain by another nodular layer that forms the top of a calcareous grit (Greensand). The two beds, 4 and 5, seem to thin out westward as in the figure, the higher one going the further.

The opening of the gallery of an old quarry in the high cliff above the western end of the great landslip is in what I take to be the "Beer stone." As the beds worked are just above the Chalk Marl, it follows that they are simply Lower Chalk ; and this conclusion as to the position of the Beer stone is strengthened by an examination of the great quarry inland, where the stone is still worked.

This quarry is about three quarters of a mile westward of the village of Beer ; and at the time of my visit the part on the northern side of the road gave the section below, with a dip of 4° E.

Chalk with flints 30 or 40 feet.

a. Thickly bedded, massive, with a rough layer on top (mostly forming a hard even cap) 15 or more.

b. Massive, more crystalline bed ("freestone") about 10

c. More splintering, and with dividing lines of a darker tint about 8

? Chalk Marl. Bottom part with a few quartz-grains and black grains.

a, b, &c. are all parts of one mass,