iece of
country, occupying the east of Hampshire and practically the whole of
Sussex, Surrey and Kent, in which each geological stratum produces its
own type of scenery, and exercises its own specific influence on every
natural distribution. The sheet of Chalk shows its cut edges in the
escarpments facing the centre of the Weald, and surrounding it in an
oval ring, the eastern end of which is broken by the Strait of Dover,
so that its completion must be sought in France. From the crest of the
escarpment, all round on south, west and north, the dip-slope of the
Chalk forms a gentle descent outwards, the escarpment a very steep
slope inwards. The cut edges of the escarpment forming the Hog's Back
and North Downs on the north, and the South Downs on the south, meet
the sea in the fine promontories of the South Foreland and Beachy
Head. The Downs are almost without population, waterless and
grass-covered, with patches of beech wood. Their only important towns
are on the coast, e.g. Brighton, Eastbourne, Dover, Chatham, or in the
gaps where rivers from the centre pierce the Chalk ring, as at
Guildford, Rochester, Canterbury, Lewes and Arundel. Within the Chalk
ring, and at the base of the steep escarpment, there is a low terrace
of the Upper Greensand, seldom so much as a mile in width, but in most
places crowded with villages scarcely more than a mile apart, and
ranged like beads on a necklace. Within the Upper Greensand an equally
narrow ring of Gault is exposed, its stiff clay forming level plains
of grazing pasture, without villages, and with few farmhouses even;
and from beneath it the successive beds of the Lower Greensand rise
towards the centre, forming a wider belt, and reaching a considerable
height before breaking off in a fine escarpment, the crest of which is
in several points higher than the outer ring of Chalk. Leith Hill and
Hindhead are parts of this edge in the west, where the exposure is
widest. Several towns have originated in the gaps of the Lower
Greensand escarpment which are continuous with those through the
Chalk: such are Dorking, Reigate, Maidstone and Ashford. Folkestone
and Pevensey stand where the two ends of the broken ring meet the sea.
It is largely a region of oak and pine trees, in contrast to the beech
of the Chalk Downs. The Lower Greensand escarpment looks inwards in
its turn over the wide plain of Weald Clay, along whic